The Dance of the Twelfth Moon
by Sapphirefly
Summary: AU. A Regency style romance between Zel and Lina. He's the 2nd son of a wealthy family and she's an heiress who has decided to run away with a caravan of gypsies.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

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Author's Notes: Okay kittens, this is way different than anything else I've written. It's going to be fun and silly and totally full of froth. So, please let me know what you think!

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**Chapter One**

Zelgadis Greywers closed the door to the conservatory behind him. It didn't make a sound as he clicked the door shut – just as he hoped. He stepped away from the glass door and into the greenery of the plants to hide himself.

Granted he had not even been home for more than five hours and already his mother was at his throat. When he was a child he had never thought of her as a mercenary creature, but now as she harped at him about his single state, he found it difficult to think of her as anything else. She seemed to be constantly badgering him about how he _ought_ to get married, and _ought_ to get married soon! She couldn't bear the idea of only one of her sons being distinguished, and right now the distinguished one was not Zelgadis. So, his older brother had inherited everything from their father when he died. Zelgadis found he could not blame his brother for that, nor could he really consider it a misfortune on his own head that he had not inherited much of anything. He didn't particularly care for the duties of a landlord, thus he didn't envy his brother his occupation, so it was no loss to him.

Zel's mother was pleased when Zel decided to enter the army, and even more pleased when he was given the rank of Colonel. Yet, it was not enough to satisfy her. She would not be satisfied until he was married to an heiress. There was no other way to please her.

However, this was the one thing that would not satisfy Zelgadis in the least. It wasn't that he couldn't see his mother's reasons behind an advantageous marriage. It wasn't that. It was just that he couldn't see sufficient reason to sell himself in the way his mother suggested. There was a little money left to him by his father, and his commission in the army amply paid for all of his immediate wants. The idea of a woman in his life obtained solely for whatever money she might have struck Zel as not only ridiculous, but also inhuman.

Actually, he did not see himself getting married at all, but if he should choose to do something of the sort, it could only be for a woman he was passionately in love with. Not that Zel thought that he could ever be passionately in love with anyone – he didn't. He had never been in love with anyone, and he was beginning to doubt his attachment to his own mother and brother. He was becoming heartless . . . and he liked it.

At this precise moment Zel had left the room where his mother and brother were playing cards. He had declined the invitation when they asked him to play, saying it would make for an odd game with three players instead of two or four. With his mother distracted for a moment, he took the opportunity to say that he felt as though he needed some exercise before he retired for the evening, and excused himself from the quaint sitting room before she could voice an objection.

He had also been disappointed with his older brother's lack of inclination to stand up for him when his mother got her meat hooks into him at dinner. Zel might have been mistaken, but he thought that Rezo was perhaps enjoying the chance for someone else to have a piece of her tongue. Rezo _did_ live with her, so she got her way with him all the time. Whereas, Zel was only visiting, so it was a rare chance for her to vent her opinions of her second son to him directly.

It was a relief to get away from them both.

From the conservatory, Zel took himself outside. It was summertime, and not dark at all, so he simply began walking away from the house. Where he went to, he really didn't care. He was glad to be walking since he had ridden horseback most of the day to get there.

Zel walked along, and wondered if any of the place was really dear to him anymore. The trees and shrubs he recognized, but he didn't feel at all nostalgic. Was this place really his home? Had it ever been his home? Was it his refuge against all that was wrong in the world? He felt distinctly that it was not, and touched a finger to the cravat at his throat. He had arrived at the mansion with his regimentals on, but changed out of them for dinner. Suddenly, he felt his blood rising in hot rebellion against what his mother wanted him to be. What he _ought_ to be! His regimentals were not good enough for her. She would not be content with him until he was as much a gentleman as Rezo. As if fortune had anything to do with whether or not a man was a gentleman!

He carefully untied his cravat and disconnected it from the collar of his shirt. He hadn't been in the shire for some time . . . maybe if he went into town no one would notice who he really was, and he could use a drink of ail. He put his feet to the road and decided to walk away from the village he had ridden through on his way in and go the other way instead. There wasn't much this way, but he knew there was an inn four or five miles in the direction he chose to walk in.

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Zel arrived at the village and found the inn. He had his drink at the inn without rousing too much suspicion. He was careful not to drink much either, in case someone was to recognize him and report it to his mother. He wouldn't be able to bear her mouth if he was both wild and poor. That would be too much for any man.

After his drink, he determined that he had made himself mellow enough to face his mother and paid his bill.

The street was colder than he remembered, and it seemed that the wind had come up with a chill. Zel did up the buttons to his coat and moved to endure it. It would be quite late at the house by the time he arrived as it was.

As Zel was walking he suddenly became most concerned about the time, and that it would probably be much past midnight by the time he got home. Whether he was famously rebellious or not, his mother would have something to say about that too, and even though he had made himself feel equal to her wrath, he didn't want to incur it if there was a possibility of avoiding it.

He decided to take a shortcut through the woods.

Zel did not feel as though he had lost his direction, but soon thought that he must have, as he found himself approaching people. There was music playing and a bonfire in their midst. As he got closer, he realized that he was not mistaken about the direction. He was exactly where he thought of was, and these people were where they should not have been. It was a caravan of gypsies set up for the night.

He was planning on walking right past them, but the sound of their music . . . it made him want to take a closer look. He found himself sneaking up closer.

The circle around the fire was not large. There was only one thin line of people encircling the fire. There were two caravans at one side where it seemed that most people were gathered. The musicians were there and so was whatever food it was they were serving – some kind of meat. It smelt wonderful to Zelgadis.

Suddenly, he noticed there was a girl standing a little bit in front of him. She was swaying to the music, the folds of her dress swinging around her. Then she was stepping forward into the heat of the fire, dancing.

Zelgadis stared.

He had never seen anything like her before. At that moment, she seemed not like a person to him, but like the spirit of all his rebellion against an aristocratic life that he did not want to live. Soon he found himself tapping his foot to the beat of the drums and then clapping his hands with the others who watched her.

Other girls got up and danced with her too, but Zelgadis' eyes remained on her only, until the end of the song. Her cheeks were stained a vital red from the exercise and soon he thought from merely the life in her eyes that he had never seen a woman so beautiful in his life.

When the song ended, she threw herself on the ground close to where she had been standing before. There was a discarded shawl on the grass near her and she caught it up and tied it around her waist. Then, for some unknown reason (at least it was unknown to Zelgadis) she turned around and faced Zel. Then she put out her hand and beckoned him to crouch beside her.

"Did you like it?" she asked him, when he was close to her.

"Very much," he conceded, a little surprised at her cultured tone.

"I've never seen you before. What are you doing here?" she questioned, a little bewildered.

"I'm afraid I stumbled on your party without meaning to. I ought not to have intruded. I'd better skip out before someone, less benevolent than you, notices that I was not invited," he said.

"What if I asked you to stay? Your eyes are very flattering and I wouldn't mind being flattered for a little longer," she said, putting her hand into her hair, as if to draw his attention to her slim neck.

He found himself smiling. "You're audacious, aren't you? What makes you so sure it was you I found so interesting dancing out there? There are many pretty girls here."

"There may be many pretty girls here, but it was me you were admiring. Well, you couldn't have helped it. I just attract admirers where ever I go," she said, dropping her hair, and drawing herself around to face him better.

"You are wretchedly conceited," he said shaking his head, thinking only that she was thoroughly amusing. "Not very ladylike."

"Why would I want to be ladylike? Think of all the prejudice and backstabbing they must do among their own kind to maintain their pride. I'm sorry, but you must excuse me if I think that kind of life too shallow to bother participating in it. I find it too painful."

"I can understand what you mean," Zel answered, thinking about what a shocking resemblance her description was to his mother.

"And then, if you're a lady and you have money, there are only some gentlemen that you can marry. Your family would want you to marry a man with wealth as well, but perhaps you might hanker for love, and think a combined fortune with a wealthy man worthless to true love with a beggar . . ." her energy of voice failed her as she got further into her tirade until she was silent. "Anyway," she said at length. "I don't think I would be happy living as a lady."

"Well," he said observing her pale skin in the firelight. "You're not a gypsy, so maybe you were a lady once. Therefore, you would have the experience to complain all you want. In fact, I'd love to hear you and join in at the appropriate moments – enjoying your liberation."

She smirked, "Or maybe I could show you how much fun it can be to behave in a way that is extremely unladylike."

"Really," he said, and before he knew it she had snatched him by the cheeks and pressed her lips to his in the most inviting sort of kiss.

Then before he could return it, or even think, she had sprung to her feet and disappeared behind the musicians.

He didn't even see where she had gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

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**Chapter Two**

The next morning Zelgadis awoke to the tongue lashing he was expecting to get from his mother the night before. Though thankfully she was in bed when he arrived home; that didn't stop the servants from telling her exactly what hour that was.

Now he sat across from her and Rezo at the breakfast table wondering profusely how such a little woman could make so much noise.

"Well, you _can't_ go out walking tonight," she said at last in aggravated tones, ending their discussion of the disgrace of his lateness.

"Why?" Zel asked simply.

"There's a ball being held at the Ut Copt mansion tonight and you must come with us. They are holding the ball to honour a relative . . . a young lady, I believe," his mother said excitedly. "I know neither of you," she said indicating Rezo and himself, "find much pleasure in a ball, but if you don't attend it will be a terrible slight to Lady Filia."

"You know mother couldn't stand to have Lady Filia slighted," Rezo said sarcastically to Zelgadis.

"I don't know why you're always so hard on her. She's delightful!" she exclaimed.

Zelgadis understood the sarcasm in his brother's tenor. Lady Filia was a hundred years old if she was a day and still contrived to look like a debutant. The only person in the community who rivaled her in age was her equally ancient husband, Lord Valgaav, who also never managed to really look older than thirty. Yet, Zelgadis had known them since he was a child, and they had never looked any different to him. It wasn't really that either of them was so very tiresome, but the lengths that their mother went to impress them were. Having been around so long, apparently they had a great deal of money, and to stand within earshot of his mother paying her compliments to Lady Filia, Zelgadis thought was very much like placing his head in a vice grip.

"Well, what do you plan to do today?" she asked Zelgadis suddenly.

"I thought I'd go on a tour of the park. It's been a long time since I've been here and last night it was most disappointing how little I was able to see. I was thinking touring on horseback in broad daylight might be more profitable," he said, trying desperately to think of any excuse that would free him from the house.

"You could go shooting," she suggested helpfully.

"Will I fail as a gentleman if I say that I would much rather not go shooting? You must understand; I shoot all the time. It would make for a nicer vacation if I could leave my gun at home," Zel answered.

"Very well," she said, waving her hand at him. "It's just that I thought I heard Gabriev commenting that we had a lot more pheasants on our property then our neighbors."

"That's only because we haven't had the gypsy problem that some of our neighbors have had," Rezo said wisely.

Zelgadis snatched onto Rezo's speech and asked, "What is the gypsy problem exactly?"

"It's nothing," Rezo said nonchalantly. "A group of them have been moving down the country side for some time now. It's nothing out of the ordinary, except that a few more birds have been missing from local estates than is usually the case with gypsies."

"They're a terror on the country side," his mother said pulling out her handkerchief and putting it to her nose.

"Regardless, it's nothing to get agitated about," Rezo said.

Zelgadis shook his head and let the subject drop.

There wasn't much left to the meal and soon he took himself out of the breakfast room. He wanted to have a chance to think about what happened the night before. Not that there was much to comment on, but he had never been kissed by a woman without his consent before, and there weren't that many times that he had voluntarily kissed anyone. Yet, it wasn't just the kiss that got his attention. That girl – her lack of interest in all things conventional . . . No, not just a lack of interest, but an outright distain for the pursuit of fortune, the hypocritical practices behind a respectable lifestyle, and her own abandon of them. It was most intriguing to Zelgadis, and in all honestly, as he planned on setting out that morning on his mount, he had no other course in mind but to find that girl and speak with her again.

However, just before he could make his hasty departure, the housekeeper entreated him to take a little food with him in case he was out too long to come back in time for dinner.

He smiled as he took the little bundle from her. Perhaps it was her good heart working overtime or perhaps she recognized how unwelcome another such meal as breakfast was to him. Whatever it was, he was grateful for her efforts and set out.

Zel pointed his mare in the direction he had met the gypsies and set of at a brisk trot. The distance was nothing and he soon found himself where he was certain he had encountered them, but there was nothing remaining but a little ash from their bonfire. He dismounted and walked around the area slapping his whip against the palm of his hand. At first he figured out where the caravans had been parked the night before and then tried to determine in which direction they had gone. The marks in the grass where not dark, but he was certain they had gone southeast, and come in from the northwest. With that much to go on, he was soon back on his horse and following a general path that looked like the one the gypsies had either made or would follow because of the scarcity of trees.

Before going more than a mile, Zel noted one spot in the trail where it looked like one of the two caravans went one way and the other one went another way. One set of tracks seemed to lead in the direction of the road, and the other led in the direction of his family estate.

He perked up considerably at this information. Maybe the girl from the night before was looking for him. Maybe she was as fascinated with him as he had been with her. Perhaps it was possible that she was trying to seek him out. He shook the thought off immediately. That was simply not possible. Young women did not seek out young men – that just wasn't the way society worked. Only extremely ill bred girls made their preference of any particular man known. Even if the girl did abandon respectable living in order to run wild with the gypsies, Zelgadis couldn't believe her, or any other female, capable of actively chasing a man. He just couldn't believe it.

All the same, Zel spurred his horse on, and as soon as he reached his own property decided to take a more active role in touring the park. He wanted to discover if she really were coming to find him.

The sun rose higher in the sky and soon he perceived it to be around noon or one o'clock. He wasn't yet hungry, but he was thinking of stopping for a break when all of a sudden he heard shots being fired and quickly closed in to investigate. No one was supposed to be shooting on their property today.

The area had a lot of tall grass as well as trees surrounding it, and Zelgadis couldn't yet see who it was who had fired the shots. As he got closer he decided to dismount and approach the person on foot as so not to startle them with the sounds of the horse's hooves.

Then as he came around the corner, he saw the most extraordinary thing. He saw the girl from the night before kneeling on the ground, tying the feet of a dead pheasant together. She already had one tied to the other end of the leather strap she was using, and she had an old musket strapped to her back.

"You there," Zelgadis said, trying to sound authoritative. "Trespassing on this property and poaching are both against the law."

The girl looked up from her work and gave Zelgadis a look (you know the one I'm talking about). "Oh, really," she said saucily. "Well, I certainly wouldn't have done either of those things if I'd realized it was against the law."

"You jest?" he asked, comprehending exactly how stupid he must have sounded with his last speech.

"I couldn't help it," she said with a sudden laugh. "You looked so silly, standing there in your prim and proper coat with your top hat and everything that I had to joke. Why are you being so ridiculous anyway?"

"I wasn't being ridiculous," he said, trying desperately to regain some of his composer.

"Of course you were being ridiculous. Besides, I've never seen a man so bowled over by a tiny kiss before."

"It wasn't that," he said quickly.

"Of course it was," she said, finishing tying up the pheasants and slinging them over her shoulder so she could carry them more easily.

He was blushing hotly now, and wishing that he would stop. "Do you do that with everyone you like?"

"I didn't say that I liked you. I merely said that it was one of the privileges of being unladylike. There are all kinds of bonuses. When you feel the inclination to do something, you are free to do that something - whatever it is. Don't delude yourself into believing it really had anything to do with how handsome you are. If anything, I think I did it because I liked how you looked at me – that's all," she said, slowly walking towards him.

Her insulting manner jolted Zel back to reality, and he again remembered the posture of a polite gentleman in conversation. "I was actually hoping that I might run into today, as I had some questions I wanted to ask you," he said calmly.

"All right," she said, sitting down on the grass. She seemed to be pretending that they were in a high class drawing room by the way she moved and the way she placed her hands politely in her lap. It was made even more ludicrous by the fact that she had two dead birds hanging over her shoulder. The wings were not tied down at all and were falling down, showing the pale under feathers.

He put his hand to his forehead in exasperation. He had truly never met anyone like her. "Are you truly that disgusted with respectable society that you would make such a mockery of their habits?"

"Of course," she said scornfully, propping herself up with her elbows on the grass and shaking the birds away from her, so she would be more comfortable. "And I have a right to be," she said.

"Really? What is your situation in life so that you can afford to be so repulsed with society?"

"Would you believe me if I told you that I was once the daughter of a very rich man?"

"Easily," Zel said.

"Really? Why?" she asked, bringing her eye brows together.

"Your voice and word choice do not indicate ignorance. Nor does the light tone of your skin indicate that you have chosen to live as a gypsy for long. Your choosing to live as a gypsy must have been a fairly recent decision," he commented.

"Interesting," she said looking at the sky and rolling the word around in her mouth as though it was a taste she had never quite experienced before. "Anyway, I used to be the daughter of a rich man. Though I must say he was not a gentleman. He was a man who worked in trade, and worked very well at it. His hope for life was to have a son that could be given a title and property of his own. One day he wanted our family to be a very old wealthy name. Unfortunately, he had only two daughters, and no son to pass the name onto. Then he saw that the only way for his dream to become a reality was for his daughters to marry into old rich families that were already the best. I promise I was hounded my entire life to be the kind of girl that an extremely wealthy man would want. I was never given a moment's peace," as she spoke her voice got more heated. "So, you'll have to excuse me if I don't find I'm particularly up to challenge of being a rich man's wife."

"Oh no, you'll find nothing but empathy and understanding from me," Zelgadis said, sitting down beside her and feeling like he had found quite the little comrade. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Lina Inverse," she said uneasily and looking at the sky again.

"I'm Zelgadis Greywers, but you can always call me Zel since you despise formality so much."

"Thank-you, but why would I receive empathy or pity from a gentleman is beyond me," she said.

"Well, you must know that the land you're shooting on is Greywers land. I, however, do not own a buttercup. It all belongs to my older brother, and I – like you – have been hounded since birth that I must make a good marriage," he said cheerfully, just happy to have someone in a similar circumstance to speak to.

However, Lina rose to her feet with a hot blush on her cheeks to match the rouge red of her hair. "I don't think we should have spoken so openly about our situations. It was a mistake."

He got up too to try to catch her and have her explain why she was suddenly so angry, but she had run off – in which direction he did not see – but when he went back to his horse he saw that the packed lunch that the housekeeper had given him was gone.

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Author's Notes: Thanks for everyone who sent me such great comments on the first chapter. I have to say really quickly here that I'm not English, nor am I super well versed on British geography, so this is more a spoof on the genre than anything, so please don't stone me if you notice something that's off. Thankx! 


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

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**Chapter Three**

When Zelgadis returned home he found that he had to begin his preparations for the evening's ball immediately. He still didn't want to go, but had decided very firmly that he would wear his red army coat. He didn't know if his mother expected him to wear the latest fashion, and he didn't want to find out.

Plus, he had been feeling quite cantankerous since his meeting with Lina that afternoon. Why was she suddenly so angry with him? It had to have something to do with money. Did the blasted woman think he was after her dowry now? He shook his head, as he didn't believe it could be something that foolish. The girl had to have more sense than that. He _agreed_ with her that the whole quest for fortune was a vain one. Did she not understand?

Zelgadis came down the stairs to meet his mother and brother right before his mother sent the butler to fetch him. Zel thought his timing was extremely lucky, as she would have been even more irritable if he had made her wait. She eyed his red coat, but said nothing as they went down the steps to the carriage. Zel decided the reason she had no objection was either because she didn't know whether or not he ought to be wearing it out to a social function (because of some sort of military rule), or it was because she was proud that he was a colonel.

The Ut Copt mansion was lit up brightly for the ball that evening, and Zelgadis saw that the old place held far more charm for him than the estate of his mother and brother. Maybe it was because he knew that there would be nothing but a warm welcome for him here from Lady Filia and Lord Valgaav. They wouldn't harass him to be wed. In any case, he was certain he would get away from the ball that evening without having been lectured to about his lack of bride – or so he thought.

Lady Filia greeted them as cordially as a queen, and his mother inquired about the 'special friend' that the ball was being held to honour. Filia told her that the young lady had not been introduced to anyone in the neighbourhood, and that very few people even knew her identity.

"She's going to come down once everyone is settled," Filia said brightly. "She'll come down the broad staircase, and make such a sensation. I know it. I know you'll be most happy to become acquainted with her Colonel Greywers," Filia directed at Zelgadis with a knowing smile.

Zel smiled back, but had no idea what the woman was hinting. As soon as he thought it would be safe to get away he moved towards the only unoccupied corner of the room and took up watch. A servant soon came by and offered him a glass of champagne, which he took gratefully. He didn't feel at all awkward secluding himself in this way, but he knew that his mother would not approve. He thought of engaging someone in conversation, just to save himself from her bad temper, but he found himself thinking only of Lina and her defiant attitude. He liked that attitude so much that he found he had lost the will to please his mother. However, it wasn't long before another army man found his way over to Zelgadis. Zelgadis knew him only as Zangulus, and found his company tolerable enough as to not mind sharing his corner with him. For one thing – the man didn't talk much.

"How did you get suckered into attending tonight?" Zangulus asked taking a long drink from his own glass.

"The Ut Copt's are old family friends," he said simply, leaving his mother out of the conversation, even though she was the only reason why. "And you?"

"My wife likes society. She simply had to come and see who Lady Filia's special debutant was."

Zel rolled his eyes thinking again of Lina's distain towards a marriage of fortune, and that was what introducing a debutant was all about.

Suddenly, it seemed that the time had come for Lady Filia to introduce her little friend as the butler stood at the top of the stairs and said in a clear ringing voice to the assembly, "Ladies and Gentlemen if I could have your attention please."

Zel found that he could not even look at the stair case the young lady was supposed to be descending from. He turned his back and looked away as the announcer finished his rapturous description of the lady.

At last he finished with "I introduce to you – Miss Inverse."

Zel flung his head around, but unfortunately the young woman was no longer on the stairs, but immersed in a crowd.

"Excuse me," Zel said moving away from Zangulus.

"Ridiculous," Zangulus said under his breath, but Zelgadis heard him.

Zel didn't care. Could it be Lina that Lady Filia was introducing that night? Could she have really come to something like this and allowed herself to be introduced to the crowd in that way? To think, he had found her that morning poaching pheasant.

Zel pushed through the crowd, but was unable to see her red head. Had she already been whisked off somewhere? Zel walked with long strides through different circles, searching for her red red hair, but couldn't see anyone like that. Soon, people were clearing the dance floor to make room for a couple. Zel saw Lord Valgaav take a young girl of pale violet out and begin a dance. Other couples soon joined them, but as Zel watched he couldn't find Lina among them.

At last he spotted Rezo and joined him. "I missed the big introduction. Which one is Miss Inverse?"

Rezo shook his head disdainfully. "You really did miss it didn't you? There she is dancing with Lord Valgaav. Did you ever see such a woman? I don't know why Lady Filia has decided to take that girl under her wing. The Inverses are such a low connection. I mean, of course the girl is worth twenty thousand pounds, but her father was in trade for pity sake."

Zelgadis looked out on the dance floor. The girl Lord Valgaav was dancing with – yes, she was very lovely – but not half as lovely as Lina dancing in the firelight. She was elegant, but he found that he could not believe that Lina would not outmatch her in that if Lina put her mind to it. Were they related?

"Do you know her first name?" Zel asked nonchalantly.

"I believe her name is Luna, and if you will please direct your attention to your dance card – I think you have the next dance with her," Rezo said.

Zel had ignored that damn thing when his mother gave it to him, but he saw that he was dancing with her for the next round. He cursed softly.

"So, you don't want to dance with her either? I'm up after you and admit freely that I don't relish the idea. If I must dance with a daughter of Titus Inverse I would much prefer the younger. Still mother will expect one of us to move into courting position since Luna's so popular with Lady Filia and has twenty thousand pounds," he paused. "How about if you marry her Zelgadis? It will save me a tremendous amount of trouble and you'll never see her anyway – you'll always be away on assignment – and twenty thousand certainly is something."

"What was it you said about the younger sister?" Zel asked, ignoring his brother's usual snobbery.

"Oh, nothing at all. I just happened to meet her younger sister at some point when I was in town last year. I hear she's worth twenty as well. Ah, well, it's of little importance."

With that Zel found his mother approaching the two of them, seemingly with a purpose. She pulled Zelgadis aside and told him in a way that couldn't possibly have been misinterpreted that she expected him to begin courting – and eventually to be married to – Luna Inverse. Rezo proudly listened in on the conversation. Zel thought he looked grateful that their mother had not decided that he was the better choice. Zel found his temper on the rise, and begged to be excused as he had better not keep the lady waiting – the song had ended.

His mother let him go easily enough, but Zel was not content. This was enough to drive a man over the edge.

Zel found himself bowing to Miss Inverse and taking her in his arms. She didn't look much like Lina in feature or in colouring, except perhaps for her eyes. Her eyes were as red as Lina's and seemed to have a glint of something in them – not the defiance that Lina carried – but left him with a feeling as though he were being examined. In the end, he decided that she was measuring him up to see if he was good enough for her.

* * *

That night Zelgadis came home a little drunker than usual. He didn't usually drink like that when he went to social functions, but tonight he had found it to be necessary evil if he was going to survive. It seemed that Luna did not find him objectionable at all. He did not make conversation, but she seemed to enjoy that he kept his mouth shut. Instead, she gave him the feeling that he were a piece of meat out on display. He knew that women felt that way sometimes, that men were only interested in them for their outward appearance, but he had never had cause to feel that way himself. It seemed to him that she was deciding how well he would look in a portrait on the mantle – and that her conclusion was that he would look fabulous. 

His mother had spoken to him again on the way home about his beginning his courtship to her immediately, and her manner indicated that if he did not do this he might as well not ever come back to the estate. Zel didn't care if he ever came back to the mansion, but he did care if his life were devoid of peace. There was no possible way that she would simply let him leave and find his own path in life. Even though she acted now like she could disown him, he found that he didn't believe she would actually stick to that. He would never have the peace from her that he sought.

As he stood on the balcony after the household had gone to bed, he stood with another drink in hand. He found himself feeling extraordinarily trapped. How could he work his way out of this one?

The sky was very bright, and the moon shone clear as crystal. It lit up the world around the manse and showed him one other thing – a tiny line of smoke climbing into the atmosphere. He knew there was no house or cottage there – it was just British wilderness out there – and the gypsies had found another place to camp.

Suddenly, an idea came into his head. Perhaps he would have dismissed this idea out of hand if he had not been fairly drunk, but as he was half way to becoming pickled to the gills – it seemed like a great idea. He just had to find Lina and propose the idea to her.

He would go right now.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

**Chapter Four**

The fire the gypsies had set up was definitely on Greywers land, but Zel decided to ride anyway. There was a chance – a definite chance – that Lina was the younger sister Rezo had referred to when he spoke of Luna's younger sister. Not only that, but Lina had told him herself that she was the daughter of a rich man; at least that she used to be. If only half of what he suspected of her was true, his plan would work perfectly. She only had to accept him to achieve complete success – for both of them.

As he neared the camp, he slowed his horse's hooves. He dismounted at a good distance as well, as he really didn't want to cause a disturbance. Hopefully, he would be able to approach them in much the same way he had the first night, and no one but Lina would know that he had come at all. The camp was lit up with a bonfire of the same kind as the one they had before. There didn't seem to be any dancing, but there was some music playing. It wasn't the same as before. There were no drums, but the faintest of flutes was playing, and as he had been drawn to the gypsies because of their music in the first place, he found himself being drawn in again. There were tents set up and people cooking, seeming to go about their evening in a casual way, but where ever he looked he couldn't find Lina, or the person playing the flute.

Zelgadis rested one of his hands against a nearby tree – the place where he could hear the melody of the flute the best, but where was the player?

Suddenly the music stopped and Zelgadis heard a flirty voice in his ear saying, "Did you think you'd get another kiss if you came back Master Greywers?"

He turned around to see Lina hanging upside down from the tree, so that her lips were just level with his ear. "AHHH!" he exclaimed in surprise. "Lina," he said catching his breath, "I didn't expect to . . ."

"No. I can see you didn't," she said stiffly as she let herself down from the tree and stood a little bit away from him with the air of an angry goddess. "What are you even doing here?" she asked, turning her back on him for a moment and pulling what remaining pins she had in her hair out. It was then that he saw she carried a flute in one of her hands.

"I liked your music," he said, understanding that she was not exactly pleased to see him.

"You know – Zel – it's really nice that you seem to have a little crush on me. Men love me, so I don't really blame you for totally falling for me, but you might as well give it up. I'm really not your type," she said casually.

Zel found that the liquor made the heat rise into his temples much faster than normal – and he was short tempered as it was. "Look Lina – please don't flatter yourself that I am in love with you. I know virtually nothing about you except that you are disdainful of society and that you are Luna Inverse's younger sister," Zel said, hoping desperately that he wasn't wrong about her connection to Luna.

Lina whirled around, looking every bit as baited as he felt. "Who told you?" she shouted.

"I met her tonight," Zel said easily, feeling much more confident knowing that he was speaking to a girl who had inherited twenty thousand pounds. His plan would not have been successful otherwise.

"There is no way she would have admitted such a thing to you, or to anyone. Who told you?"

"Will you listen to me if I lay out a . . . proposal to you?" He found himself choking on the word 'proposal', but the reckless feeling that had come upon him earlier had not yet subsided, so he had no inclination to back out. "It won't take very long, and I think it will be of great benefit to both of us."

She nodded and sat down.

He sat down with her, and was thinking how he could begin his story without scaring her or making her angry. It took a moment, but he was finally able to begin, "I told you that I am the second son in the Greywers family. When my own father died, of course most everything went to my older brother. As far as the inheritance went, I really didn't care that my brother got it all. I went and joined the army . . ."

"Another thing I'm against," she interrupted.

"You're just against anything that has any order to it," he said back to her.

"Maybe," she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.

"Anyway, I'm a colonel. Like your father, my mother wants me to marry and wants me to marry well. For her though, I don't think she has much hope that I'll be able to marry a good name, and has decided that if I can have a fortune that it will be good enough. Tonight she made it very clear to me that she wants me to marry your sister."

Lina began to laugh.

"What? Why are you laughing?"

"I can't help it," she said, covering her mouth with her hand. "Luna loves a man in a red coat. Sometimes I think she'd join the army if they would let her, but even without the coat she's like a dragon knight."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Just you _try _to go to battle against her. She always gets what she wants. So . . . do you want to marry her?" Lina asked coyly.

"That's the thing. I don't want to marry anyone, but I will have to marry someone if I'm to have any peace. Like I said before, my mother desperately wants me married, and she's making my life a living hell. In any case, I can't marry your sister – I have a sneaking suspicion that she won't let me live in peace either."

"Would you marry her if you thought she would leave you alone?"

"Absolutely," Zel said. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Not really. Like I explained before, I can't think of anything worse than a woman being married for her money, and putting herself up for sale in that way. It's even stupider, because she'd be paying the price for herself."

"Not the way I want to see you married," Zel said.

Lina looked at him quizzically.

"Look, I don't want what I'm about to say to be misinterpreted as romance or even attraction. The fact that I do find you quite attractive has nothing to do with . . . anyway," he said, catching himself. "If you married me, I wouldn't take your money."

SMACK!

"But . . ."

SMACK!

"Lina . . ."

SMACK!

"Can't you . . ."

SMACK!

It was all gentlemanly and good to take a woman's slap when it was deserved, and take it with grace, but she had just slapped him four times!

"Don't . . ."

He caught her hand as she moved to plant the fifth.

"Don't you think you could listen to what I have to say before you jump to the conclusion that I am trying to insult you?" he asked.

She tried to squirm her wrist from his grip, and looked up at him with rebellious eyes. "Fine then! What would you do? What other purpose could you possibly have to marry me since you claim so adamantly that you are not at all interested in me?"

"You're wrong; I am interested in you . . . as a person. It's just that I have no interest in marrying anyone. I'm an army man, and army men go off to war. If I truly cared about a woman, I wouldn't be able to go. I wouldn't be able to go away from her and possibly break her heart by being wounded or killed. If you agreed to marry me, there would be nothing but the ceremony. You could draw up any legal agreement you like to protect me from your money and I would sign it. Then you could run away with the gypsies again, and if you ever found a man you wanted to marry I would let you out of our bargain by an annulment," he said trying to let her know how serious he was by his eyes.

Her breath seemed to come fast as she said, "I just don't understand what you'll be getting out of this."

"Are you kidding? I would be free. As a married man my mother could never harp on me again to get married. I would be as safe as you from such things. Not only that, but I believe she would be quite pleased about the marriage and not realize what a self serving thing I had done until it was undoable in her eyes. In any case, I have my reasons as to why I want to do this."

"And the money doesn't mean anything to you?" she asked suspiciously.

"If the money mattered to me I would not be here with you, but instead throwing rocks at a certain window at the Ut Copt mansion – if you catch my meaning."

"Will you let go of me already?" she stammered.

It was only then that he realized he was still holding onto her wrist in a vice grip. He promptly let go of her. "I bet your pardon," he said moving away from her.

"Well Zelgadis, there is only one way to find out if I'll agree to your proposal," she said, seeming to get an incredibly good idea.

"What way is that?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" she asked with a wickedly playful grin. "We're with the gypsies. We'll both have to have our fortunes told."

* * *

Lina pulled him into one of the tents and pushed him down on the rug in front of an ancient gypsy woman. "Madam Martina, will you please tell the good Colonel his fortune." 

"Naturally," she said, pulling her hood even further down over her face, "If he has the fortune to pay for a fortune."

Zel took this as a cue that he ought to pay the woman something for her troubles. He had come into the woods with no money on him whatever. He had just come home from the ball when he got the idea to propose his plan to Lina. He would have parted with his cuff links in an instant, but those were the first things he shed when he came into his room. Searching his pockets, he found that he had nothing of value on him at all except for his tinderbox, which he readily gave up.

Madam Martina snatched it up instantly and asked him to extend his palm. Lina took a seat across from Zel beside the old woman, and watched with interest.

At last she started, "What a clean palm you show me! It won't always look like this, now will it? You have a hard destiny ahead of you boy, but then you've always known that you were marked for misfortune. Now, show me your eyes."

Zel obediently leaned forward, wondering exactly how this was going to decide if Lina would marry him, but he would endure it for her. Maybe that was all she wanted from him. Maybe if he sat here pleasantly and appeared to take what this woman said seriously, that would be enough to win her over, or maybe she just wanted to hear that he was honest in his proposal. Who knew?

"Your eyes," the woman said softly after a short interval. "When I look in them why do I see a chimera? Never mind – it's gone now. Your eyes show a beacon. That you are unwavering; you never change your mind. Your men trust you and you want to prove to them and everyone that you are strong. But do not believe in your strength too much for you will find your weakness."

"What weakness?" Zel asked suddenly, not realizing he was taking this quite seriously.

"You'll learn it, and soon . . . very soon indeed," the woman said mysteriously. Then she suddenly perked up considerably, "Now it's your turn Lina child." With that, she took a pipe from her sleeve and used Zel's tinderbox to light it. "Better wait outside," she said gruffly to Zel.

Zel turned to Lina to see if he really was being thrown out.

"Well, get out already," she said impatiently. "I'll be out in a minute and I'll give you your answer."

Zel shrugged his shoulders and opened the flap to exit the tent. He moved away from it and found himself leaning against the tree Lina had swung down from. He would wait for her here. He soon found himself touching the tree. It was on the Greywers estate, and he remembered the tree well. He used to climb it when he was a child – the last time that he had felt truly free.

It had been a long time since he felt free, long before his father passed away. When he was that young he had not believed in the impossibility of love for himself. As he remembered how Lina had looked at him, he realized quite fully that she was probably going to say no, because she would want love – and she did not love him. He didn't even know her, yet he felt a keen sense of disappointment. It was too bad that he wouldn't get to know her better. This would be the end of their relationship.

Zel watched the flap of the tent until Lina emerged from it. The light was very dim as they were away from the fire, but she approached him with seemingly paler cheeks.

"What did she say to you?" Zel asked curiously.

"I'll marry you," she said softly, "but I'll never tell you what she told me."

* * *

Author's Notes: Isn't this stupid fun? Or at least I think it is. I have been hyper stressed this week and writing this totally took the edge off my angst. Hope you all like it, but even it you don't - it was fantastic therapy. 


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

Author's Notes: I know it's frustrating, but for anyone who's not used to the way the British used to address single females - the oldest daughter was always called "Miss insert last name>, while the young sisters were called Miss insert first name>. So, any time I say "Miss Inverse", I'm talking about Luna. Okay, so now that I got that out of the way - please enjoy the show.

* * *

**Chapter Five**

Zelgadis had an interesting time explaining to his mother why he had left the manse in the middle of the night. When she questioned him, he ended up telling her that he had gone out to work off some steam.

"What on earth is wrong with you? I understand that you probably needed to do something, but couldn't you have just had a brandy like a gentleman?" she asked impatiently.

"I think Zelgadis had had enough," Rezo said calmly at the other end of the breakfast table.

"Is that so? Well, I hope you didn't embarrass me at the Ut Copt's by being tipsy enough for anyone to notice," she said stiffly.

"I didn't embarrass any one," Zel said, trying to defend himself.

"But tell me Zelgadis, what did you think of Miss Inverse? Rezo tells me that she's just inherited twenty thousand pounds. I would never have imagined it could be so much, you know, considering her background. With a fortune like that behind her, she could probably choose any man she wished. I don't know what you've done to deserve her taking such a fancy to you," his mother said, taking a dainty bite of her toast.

"What makes you think she has taken such a fancy to me?" Zel asked.

"Well, I can't say that she did much to mark her preference, but you were more favoured than any other man there. When a lady acts, she must act with subtlety, and I think she behaved admirably, considering that Lady Filia told me that Luna had a good look around the hall before she came down, and you were the only man to turn her eye. Ha, isn't that wonderful? You must go visit her this morning, so she knows you're interested."

"Well, I'd like to do that mother, but I'm afraid that not once during this visit have you asked me if my feelings were engaged elsewhere. Now that you have made your sentiments known about whom you feel I _should_ marry and even though you have done nothing to encourage my confidence on the subject – I find that I must protest and explain that my feelings _are_ engaged elsewhere," Zel said with ease.

His mother looked at him angrily, and then exclaimed, "Why did you not say something before?"

"Truly, I would have explained sooner, had you asked me. However, I hadn't decided for myself if the lady I have been courting would be a good choice, but with your confidence in Lady Inverse and her situation, it seems unlikely that you would reject my preference."

"Who is it?" she demanded.

Zelgadis felt a certain satisfaction rising in his chest as he answered her, "Miss Inverse's younger sister – a Miss Lina Inverse."

Rezo dropped his fork on his plate with a clatter. "What did you say? How did you ever get _her_ to consent to your court?"

Zel stared. He had never seen Rezo react this way to the mention of any female. Did Rezo know Lina? He said that he had met her when they talked at the ball the night before, but was his association with her more than what he claimed?

"Why should you be surprised?" Zel asked.

"Yes Rezo, why should you be surprised? Zel is a fine young man. Why would it be so strange that Lina would like him? So, Zelgadis," she said, suddenly turning warmly on her younger son. "Where did you meet her? Has she a fortune similar to Miss Inverse's? Are you planning to marry her?"

Zel turned to answer his mother's questions as Rezo resumed eating. "Well, I met her in the park. She was with a great many friends and I joined them for awhile. After that, I just went to go visit her regularly," Zel said, considering that what he said was not exactly a lie. "As for her fortune, it is equal to Luna's, but I was so concerned mother, that you wouldn't approve, because their father was in trade."

"Ah, Zelgadis," she said with a knowing smile. "Their connections are good even though their past may not be. Don't worry about it in the least. I'm just so happy that you are able to marry for love."

Zel nearly chocked as he heard his mother say the last line. She didn't care at all if he got to marry a woman he loved as long as he married someone who brought the bank with them. He wanted to counter her and tell her that he knew she didn't care at all, but was only being this generous with him now because she could afford to be. Only minutes before she would have married him off to Luna without a backward thought as to whether or not it would make him happy. He crunched his fist around his napkin on his lap and decided to let it slide. If she was going to allow him to marry Lina with a smile spread across her evil cheeks, than so be it. That was part of the reason he was doing this anyway.

"Well, after our discussion about Miss Inverse last night, I decided . . ."

"Don't mention that now Zelgadis. It's all in the past. I'll talk to Lady Filia and we'll sort everything out," she said benevolently.

"Actually, mother, when I left the manse last night it was to send a note to Lina requesting that she join me at the estate. We talked about it briefly before I came away and we discussed accommodations and such. She'll be staying at the inn in town, but I need to go meet her carriage this morning, so that she doesn't have to come the whole way on her own. It's improper for a female to travel post on her own. In any case, if all goes well, she'll be joining us for dinner tonight." Zel was vague as to the location Lina was coming from on purpose, and hoped that his comment about young women traveling post had caught his mother's attention enough for her to rant about that subject without making further inquires.

He was right, because she immediately said, "But of course you must go and fetch her. She shouldn't be traveling with no companion at all. You must go at once, Zelgadis."

Zel smiled and got up from the table. "Thank-you mother," he said, quickly planting a kiss on her cheek before moving to exit the room.

"Maybe I should go with you," Rezo suddenly volunteered.

Zel stared again, but only for a moment before he got his bearings. Rezo certainly was behaving strangely today. "Oh no, old boy, you'd only slow me down, since you ride so slowly. Just let me go on my own and I'll be back with my lady love much sooner."

Zel didn't wait for an answer, but simply left the room without waiting for one. Above all things, he did not want Rezo accompanying him today.

The day he and Lina had planned was going to be quite a full one. First he needed to go out and meet her, which wasn't going to be easy. Unfortunately, he would need a carriage in which to pick her up, so he would have to travel to town to get that before he could even meet her. Then they had a full day of them in town visiting dress makers and the like. He had promised her that she would bear no expense for her wardrobe and that he would take care of it. Hopefully, they could be prepared by the time they were due back at the mansion for dinner.

As they talked the night before, they talked about many other things besides their plans for the next day. He mentioned the lawyer to her again and that she could draw up any deal she liked, but that would have to wait for another day, as he was certain they wouldn't have time.

"Can I lay out any conditions now?" she asked as they sat by the fire.

He added another log to the blaze and answered her that she could.

"Can I kiss you when I want to?"

Zel found himself turning very red. "Why?" he asked shyly.

"Would it make you nervous?" she asked, almost looking serious.

Zel realized that he had let his guard down in that moment when he answered her. He hadn't meant to leave himself so open. It wasn't masculine to blush, but he couldn't control the heat that flooded his cheeks when she asked him if she could kiss him. He would have to do something to show her that he wasn't shy or inexperienced.

"Wouldn't you be worried that you'd end up getting too involved with me? We don't mean for this to last forever, so why would you want to do anything to make yourself more attached to me?" he said icily.

"I don't think it would make me more _attached_ to you. I think it would help me to have a little fun with this, since for the most part – I don't think it will be very fun. I mean, we'll have to go around and impress every fat cat that your mother pulls out of the woodwork until after the wedding. I'm not saying I don't feel confident enough to pull it off, but I do think it sounds like an awfully big hassle. Besides," she said, touching his cheek. "I like how you look at me."

She was drawing herself up closer to him, and slipping her fingers into his hair. Zel found himself lowering his head in order to be closer to her, and finding – as he looked into her eyes – that he really wanted her to kiss him.

"You know Zel," she said, seemingly examining his face very closely. "There's something about you that seems very familiar. I can't exactly say what it is. I wish I could remember. Never mind. Anyway, you should go. I'm tired and not feeling as playful as I ought to." She pulled herself away.

"And no good night kiss?" he teased.

"I dunno. I might get too _attached_ to you and then you'd be stuck with me," she said with a wild smile and turned away.

Zel pulled up the reins on his horse as he set out on his day with Lina. It was foolish, but he couldn't wait to see her again.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

Author's Notes: I'm sorry I wasn't able to get this chapter out sooner. I have an excuse and it's a good one too !

* * *

**Chapter Six**

Zelgadis preferred to ride in the carriage beside Lina rather than gallop his horse beside the carriage. So, he left his horse at the stable where he rented the coach and headed to where she promised to meet him. It wasn't much of a spot, only a slight incline in the road, but she was there when he and the driver pulled up to pick her up. She didn't wait for Zelgadis to get out of the carriage before launching herself into it – calico skirts flailing and all.

"For goodness sake woman," he said urgently as she smoothed the fabric of her dress. "Haven't you any decency? What would someone passing by say if they saw you?"

She shook out her hair like she was hardly listening to what he was saying. "Don't be ridiculous," she said saucily. "No one saw me . . . and even if they did – they won't recognize me as the same person after we fix me up. I'll appear a sweet young lady when you introduce me to your mother, and you didn't even get out of the carriage just now, so there's nothing to pin you with. It doesn't really matter to you, does it? If it does, then we're going to have problems later on. You are setting yourself up to be part of one of the biggest scandals in English history. You know that don't you?"

"Why's that?" he asked.

"Because, your wife is going to run away with a caravan of gypsies rather than stay with you, that's why. Don't you think the gossip mills are going to run you through once they see what's happened? Some people will say, 'There's that cold-hearted Colonel Greywers. He married the sweetest little plum of a girl and then he went and drove her off. What she must have suffered to prefer to live with the gypsies rather than with her own husband? Poor creature!" Lina said pouting her lower lip.

Zelgadis could not stop himself from laughing at this. "I'm not sure at you're being able to convince anyone that you're sweet."

She ignored him and went on, "And some people will say, 'Poor Colonel Greywers! He married that crazy girl and now no one can free him from her. Oh, such a charming young man too! He would do very well for my daughter, but alas, it is not to be. He's fated for a difficult life'," Lina said, in a voice she must have specifically designed with which to imitate a dowager.

Zelgadis abruptly stopped laughing. "I won't allow them to say such things of you after you have gone away from me Lina. Anyone can say anything they like of me, but I shall not have them defaming you. It would be against the rules of our agreement. I have promised to bear the whole cost of this and that does not simply mean that I will pay for your dresses or the wedding or the lawyer or whatever else happens to come up. It means that I will direct all complaints regarding the affair to myself."

"But I'll be the one running away!" Lina insisted hotly. "I have already brought a considerable amount of shame onto my own head that was absolutely none of your doing, and I refuse to let you take total responsibility for my choices. I don't care what they say about me. I am merely stating that you must be prepared for what they will say about you behind your back and to your face. I'll be so far removed from those gossiping fat cats that it won't harm me at all what they say, but you will still be part of this society, and thus will have to bear it to a certain extent. I only wanted to make sure that you were prepared for the consequences."

Zel shook his head, feeling even better about their arrangement than he expected to. "There's no reason for you to worry about me. I'm sick of living my life for _their_ pleasure, but still . . ." he said, pausing, and putting two of his lean fingers up to his lips thoughtfully. "Still . . . I'll not allow those I associate with to treat you in that vile way, even if what they say can't possibly hurt you."

"Interesting," she said propping up her head with the palm of her hand and staring out the window. "You know, I don't need anyone to save me – least of all you."

"This whole proposal isn't about me saving you, you silly girl. It's about you saving me," Zelgadis said, with a sort of ultimate confidence behind his voice – behind his eyes.

Her head jerked around at his words. At first she didn't say anything, as she was regarding him very carefully. "You really are the most singular man I have ever met, and I would kiss you for what you just said . . . except . . ."

Zelgadis found himself tensing up at what she was about to say. "Except?" he asked cautiously.

"Except . . . you didn't give me permission."

Zelgadis wondered immediately if there was any way for him to correct his mistake. Why didn't he just say that he would gladly accept kisses from his fiancée? He opened his mouth and searched for the words that would remedy the situation, but luckily he remembered why he had objected in the first place. How would he manage without her kisses when she went away? To her, all that seemed like a joke, something to help pass the time and alleviate her boredom, but it wasn't like that for him. Perhaps he felt things more deeply than she did.

Zelgadis closed his mouth and examined her across the carriage – specifically her lips. It suddenly occurred to him that her lips would be the last lips he would likely ever kiss. He intended to be faithful to her, so he would never be free to pursue romance with other women. With those thoughts, he felt a rush of gratitude that at least her lips managed to quirk in precisely the right places when she delivered her lines as to leave him enchanted.

He would not forget her easily.

* * *

Zelgadis had not been entirely sure where he ought to take Lina to purchase her new wardrobe. He had actually given it quite a bit of thought, and at last he decided to take her to a place bordering the 'wrong side of the tracks'. He vaguely remembered someone saying that it was higher class than it looked, but he couldn't remember when or where he had heard the recommendation. It puzzled him, but in the end decided that a lesser known place would be a good place to start. He didn't want to take Lina into a place likely to be busy with prominent people until she had shed her charming little gypsy dress.

Well, the outfits they were to purchase were not to please him, he reminded himself. It didn't really matter that he thought she looked wonderful the way she was.

When they arrived in front of the boutique, Zelgadis asked Lina to wait in the carriage for him while he went and spoke with the manager. She didn't answer him and her eyes were closed. That was all right, as he had suspected her of being asleep for some time. They had spent most of the night before talking, so it was really no surprise.

He put on his top hat and exited the carriage.

The shop was called "Claire's Legacy". At least Zelgadis was sure he was in the right place. There was a bell over the door and it jangled as he pushed the door open.

It was dark inside the shop, or maybe it just seemed dark after the blaring sunlight outside. Soon his eyes adjusted and he saw that he was in a dress shop after all – just in case there was any doubt. There was a small counter with a woman sitting behind it, and racks and racks of dresses. The rest of the shop seemed virtually deserted, which was exactly what he was looking for.

He turned to the woman at the counter. "Good day," he said, perhaps less than pleasantly. He simply couldn't be pleasant all the time.

The woman had her back to Zel, but when she spoke to him, she turned around to flash wet eyelashes at him. She had been crying, but she looked at Zelgadis at first like she was confused, and then almost like she was angry. "What do you want?" she asked crossly.

"I have a young lady waiting outside. I was wondering if you could fix her up with some dresses," Zel said, wondering about the woman's wretched state.

"Why did you decide to come here?" she asked, blowing her nose in the most pitiable way. "Don't you know what kind of shop this is? Or aren't you a gentleman?"

"I'm sorry, but you puzzle me. What kind of shop is this that I wouldn't bring a lady here?"

She shook her head, examining Zel very closely. "I'm sorry. Have we met before?"

"I don't think so," Zel said cautiously, wondering if he were really in the wrong place. He examined the dress at the head of the rack closest to him. It looked ordinary enough. What sort of place was it so that gentlemen were not allowed? "Is this not really a dress shop? Have I stumbled on an opium den instead?" he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

She shook her head slowly. "No. If it were that, I'd be making more money than I am now. Listen, my name is Miss Eris Claire. I'm going to be profoundly honest with you, because I've just heard some dreadful news, and if I don't tell someone I think I'll go crazy. This is really a dress shop, and it was once quite successful. When I opened for business, I had an amazing financial backer, who presented me with a business loan in order for me to get started. Everything was wonderful at first, but over the past few years there has been an astounding amount of gossip concerning me. Business has gone down since then, because people of high class did not want to support someone as immoral as I'm reported to be. Then today, as if to finish me off, I have just learned that my financial backer is insisting on a full repayment of the loan." She stopped and put her nose into her handkerchief again.

"That's quite a bad story," Zelgadis said, removing his own handkerchief from his pocket and approaching her. "Please use this," he said, extending it to her. "The one you are using is soaked Miss Claire." He stopped speaking and waited until she took the fabric and until she seemed more comfortable before he went on. "That is a sad story,you're your bad reputation doesn't frighten me away. I'd still like to be a patron in your stop. I'm Colonel Greywers, and my fiancée, Miss Inverse, is waiting outside in a carriage. We need to set her up with a complete wardrobe, and unfortunately, we only have this one day to get everything. She needs absolutely everything. Do you think you could help us with an _entire _wardrobe? I'll pay you well for it – I promise."

Eris gave him the strangest look. "Miss Inverse? You don't mean Miss Lina Inverse, do you?"

"Indeed I do. Will that be a problem?"

Suddenly, it seemed that Eris' tears instantaneously dried. "Not at all. All right," she said confidently. "I would love to dress up your fiancée. Bring her in here at once, and I will dress _her_ to the nines."

Zel was even more confused than before. "I'm sorry. Do you know her?"

"I've never laid eyes on her in my life, but I promise it will be a real pleasure to be the one to prepare her for her wedding. Ohhh, can I be the one to fit her for her wedding dress? I'll do such a good job of it – the people on the balcony at the church will be shielding their eyes for the brightness of her dress," Eris said excitedly.

Zel didn't understand at all, but decided not to make a point of it. Obviously, this woman needed business badly, and to create an entire toilette for someone would probably earn some of the money she needed to repay her loan. Besides, her enthusiasm helped fuel his own determination to carry their scheme out in style.

He went to go get Lina.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

Zelgadis led Lina into the Greywers mansion by her little gloved hand, and wondered if he could possibly have a moment to speak with the housekeeper before he introduced Lina to his mother and brother. It might not be possible, but he would have to give it a try. He led Lina immediately into one of the sitting rooms that was situated close to the great hall, and asked her if she wouldn't mind waiting a few moments while he spoke to the groom and the house keeper about her luggage and accommodations.

She placed her hand on her hip in the most impatient gesture and nodded her consent.

"You're going to have to be more lady-like," he said, commenting lazily on her attitude. "If you behave that badly, we'll surely be discovered."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't have to pretend to a lady _all_ the time. That would just take far too much effort. You'll have to allow for these little outbursts while we're alone, or I won't be able to cope. Besides, if I'm allowed these little moments, I'll be sure to behave better when the pressure's on," she said with a wink. "You won't regret it."

He shrugged his shoulders in assent. "I'm sure I won't," he said as he turned and left the room.

His conversation with the housekeeper was extraordinarily brief, as she was a dear little soul who seemed to have his wishes in mind whenever he was visiting.

"The room is ready now, if she'd like to get changed before dinner."

"Thank-you Miss Amelia. I'm sure she'd like that," Zel said comfortably.

"And I'll come down with you and escort her to her room – her trunks should already be there," she said to Zel batting her blue eyes at him twice while she was speaking.

As Zel and Miss Amelia walked down the back hall, the shortest distance from the housekeeper's rooms to the sitting room where he had left Lina, he thought he heard voices. He approached the back entrance to the room and listened at the door for a moment, with the little housekeeper at his side. Someone was definitely talking – it was Rezo!

"I still don't understand why you would feel it acceptable to reject an older brother only to dive headfirst into a relationship with a younger brother. Zelgadis has nothing you know," Rezo said pompously.

"That's just like you," Lina said back clearly, not seeming to care who heard her. "You think that nobody thinks of anything except social position and wealth when thinking about marriage. To tell you the truth I had no idea that he was your brother. Of course I recognized his last name and considered the possibility that he might be a relation of yours, but it never even occurred to me that he might be your brother."

"You're wrong," Rezo said deeply.

"Wrong about what? What could I possibly have been wrong about?"

"Social position and wealth are not the only things I thought of when I began visiting you."

"Really?" Lina asked in disbelief. "All right, I doubt you were thinking of social position. I don't have a social position, but I'm certain my inheritance was enough to make up for that. I have no idea how well the Greywers fortune is doing, but if you were interested in me, than there might be some truth in the idea that your finances are floundering."

"You always twist what I say around," Rezo said heatedly. "I was about to tell you how charming I find you. You are so fascinating, but you never allow me to say so. You always make it sound like I couldn't really have cared for you at all, which is simply not true."

Zel could not believe what he was hearing, and obviously neither could the Miss Amelia. He wanted to wave her away, but as he knew that she was his best friend in the mansion he refused to send her away. Besides, he knew that she wouldn't approve of Rezo's advances on his own fiancée.

At least Lina was defending him, Zelgadis, loyally. But, this explained everything. Rezo had expressed that he found Lina more attractive than Luna at the ball the other night, but Zelgadis had thought nothing of it. Then that morning when he announced that he was going to marry Lina instead, Rezo had acted so strangely. Zel hadn't been able to figure it out. Now it all made perfect sense.

"You're lucky I don't accuse you of worse things than being greedy and calculating. Besides, nothing you could tell me would convince me that you really had any true feelings for me," Lina said dryly.

"But tell me," Rezo asked in a smoother tone. "How was Zelgadis able to do win you over?"

"It's really quite simple," she said smugly.

"Tell me."

"Zelgadis isn't pushy. You could learn a thing or two from him on how to treat women so they don't slam the door in your face."

"I guess we're through talking then," Rezo said.

"I guess. You're the one who wanted to talk in the first place. I would have been glad never to lay eyes on you again."

"Always with that mouth . . ."

Zel, suddenly getting the idea that maybe it was time for an intervention, asked the housekeeper to knock on the door. The little woman did as she was bid, and Rezo barked at her to enter.

"Miss Lina, I'm to show you to your room," she said with the appropriate curtsy.

Zel stood behind the door, and hoped that neither Lina nor Rezo guessed that he was hiding there.

Lina promptly followed the housekeeper out of the room, and waited as the housekeeper shut the door to the sitting room. There was no way that Lina wouldn't have seen Zelgadis as the door shut, but for some reason refused to acknowledge his presence there and followed the housekeeper up the stairs without a backward glance.

Suddenly, it occurred to Zel that she might have thought that he planned to have her meet Rezo there. That was something that would make her very angry indeed! He hoped that she didn't think that.

He moved away from the door and realized that he was clenching his teeth tightly. He didn't like the way Rezo talked to her. He didn't like that one bit.

* * *

Some twenty minutes later Zel was introducing Lina to his mother. Lina was dressed beautifully in a light cream gown of the palest ivory. She greeted his mother modestly – a manner he hardly believed that Lina could call on cue. How was she able to do that? His mother looked impressed and even hugged her when Zel informed her that their engagement had been finalized that day. 

Rezo came barely in time to escort their mother to the dinner table. Zel watched his brother very carefully as they ate and noticed a few things. For one thing, Rezo never looked directly at Lina. He seemed to have no trouble meeting Zelgadis' eyes. For another thing, he didn't speak. Rezo was not a great talker, but he usually dropped his sarcastic comments at exactly the right moment, but not tonight – he was keeping it all to himself. However, the biggest telltale sign that all was not right with Rezo was the way he drank. Zel had hardly ever seen Rezo take a drink. He always used to say that it numbed the senses and made a man stupid, but the way Rezo was partaking was totally uncharacteristic. The man would be completely drunk with one more swallow.

Zel's mother talked about wedding plans and wedding dates. She talked about the social engagements they would have to have before the big day and talked ceaselessly about the engagement party she would hold in their honour as soon as possible.

"I'm afraid the engagement party will have to be very soon, mother," Zel said easily. "You see, I'm due back at my post in two months. We will have to have the wedding itself before that in case I get sent off to India. I'd like to take my wife along with me."

"India," Lina squealed – suddenly excited. "You would take me to India with you. I'd love to go there. I've heard so much of the culture, so much of the heritage, so much of everything. I would love to go there with you."

"And so you shall my dear," he said reaching across the table and kissing her gloved hand. Then he had the courage to look at Rezo with a look that could only read, "I dare you to try to stop me."

Rezo wasn't looking at Zel. He was looking at something else – perhaps the carpet. Had the man drunk himself into a stupor or was he simply concentrating very hard on something?

* * *

Author's Notes: Bet you didn't see that one coming, now did ya?

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

**Chapter Eight**

When Zelgadis said goodnight to Lina in front of her bedroom door after dinner and cards, he was only thinking about how much trouble their engagement party was going to be. He had given up thinking about Rezo. To him, the situation looked pretty clear cut. Rezo had met Lina at some time and some place. Zelgadis didn't know many of Rezo's dealings, so it didn't really surprise him that Rezo had perhaps been in her society before. Rezo had obviously tried to court her – with little success. Of course Rezo wouldn't have any luck trying to court Lina. Lina was so anti-society that there didn't seem to be any possibility that it could have worked out. Zel was only a little stunned that Rezo had been interested in her in the first place. It seemed that Rezo was still a little cut up about the rejection, but Zel decided not to let that bother him. Best of all, their mother didn't seem to realize that there had ever been anything going on between Rezo and Lina. Well, nothing had been going on, but she knew nothing of the attachment – which was all Zel needed to be happy. He knew that Lina had not done anything to shame their situation, even if Rezo and Lina's past came out. From the way she had spoken to Rezo she indicated that she had always been repulsed by him, so Zel didn't have to worry that she had shared any firelight kisses with his brother. That was a comfort.

With those thoughts, he put the whole problem out of his mind and focused on the engagement party, which his mother said would come off by the end of the following week. He and Lina would be very busy helping prepare for that, and they would have to spend a great deal of time in the company of his mother. It would be more important than ever to appear ladylike (in Lina's case) and in love (in his case).

Lina didn't say anything at the door, but looked at him with examining eyes. "Is there anything you want to say to me?" she asked.

Zel furiously scanned his brain wondering if there was something that he ought to have consulted her on and had not, but couldn't think of anything. He suddenly remembered that he had not praised her on her appearance that night, and instantly said, "You looked lovely tonight Lina." He took her hand in his and kissed it politely.

From the expression on her face, he instantly knew that he had not said the thing she was fishing for. She now looked slightly angry as well as puzzled.

"I'm sorry, have I failed in politeness somehow?" Zel asked.

"Not in politeness, no," she said, taking away her hand and entering her bedchamber.

Zel stood at her door for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck, wondering how he had upset her. Suddenly, he heard the lock on the door click into place. He was a little surprised that she had thought to lock her door, but decided that it was her choice and walked away.

In his own room, he thought carefully about what he must have done to upset her as he undressed. If she was angry at him, she had not revealed it at all during the evening's events. She had acted the perfect lady the entire time and shown her preference for him flawlessly. He had even been beginning to believe that she really did care for him, but then when he spoke to her at the door; it was plain to see that she was only a very clever actress, who had even been able to fool the one person who knew it was an act. Well, Zel was at least satisfied that their plan would go off well – if at least he, Zelgadis, didn't mess it up. He would have to arrange for a time for him to speak to her alone the next day, so that he could do whatever was necessary smooth things over with her.

Zel turned off the lamp. He might as well go straight to sleep. He hadn't slept much the last few nights, as he had kept himself up late and then roused himself early each morning. He pulled back the bed sheets and climbed into bed. The room was very dark, as the housekeeper had closed the heavy bedroom curtains. Miss Amelia would probably send some manservant in to wake him up early again. Oh well, at least he hadn't made his mother angry by being late for the breakfast table.

Zel closed his eyes, but he felt like he had hardly slept when he heard those heavy curtains being pulled aside. He opened his eyes, ready to spring out of bed, even though he felt like he needed several more hours sleep. But the room was still in darkness, except for the moon light that was now coming through the window panes and highlighting the young woman leaning against the curtains.

"Lina," he said quietly. "What are you doing here?" He wouldn't allow himself to panic, but he had never had a woman in his bedroom before. He couldn't permit himself to look inexperienced, but looking surprised at her entrance couldn't be bad.

"Look," she said, quite firmly, bringing her hands together in the moonlight, so they looked to Zel like the hands of a porcelain statue. "I want to know why you didn't tell me that Rezo was your brother."

Zel moved the sheets and sat up in his bed with his feet on the floor. "I didn't know that I needed to tell you that. I was astonished that you knew him at all."

"Why didn't you come in and stop him from talking to me like that, since you were obviously listening at the door?"

"I sent the housekeeper in, at what seemed like a good time," Zel answered.

"Look Zel, I have had enough trouble with Rezo Greywers to call this whole thing off right now and head back out with the gypsies," Lina said. The way she put her lips together after speaking showed that she was deadly serious about what she said, and she had never looked as beautiful to Zel as she did just then.

"Look Lina," Zel started out, trying to sound every bit as serious as she did, and being incredibly successful. It was easy if he just let himself fall into Colonel Mode. "What is it you want to find out from me? I had no idea that you had any connection to my brother whatever. I don't see how it could hinder our plans one bit. If you don't want to see him – I'll keep him away from you. If it makes you feel better to lock your bedroom door for as long as you stay here – feel free. I realize this is something neither you nor I anticipated, so we might as well just figure out a way to deal with it. I'm totally content to just let things slide – and as I stood outside of the sitting room while you held your own telling Rezo off – pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary. If you would like me to do something different, I would be more than willing to comply."

"Really?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest. "You'll handle this any way that I like?"

"Of course," he answered readily.

"What about Luna?" Lina asked suddenly.

"What about Luna? How does she figure into this at all?" Zel asked.

"Luna knows that Rezo was courting me – or at least that he was trying to before I ran away with the gypsies. I understand that she's staying over at the Ut Copt mansion. When she hears of this, I don't know if she's going to tell the entire town the story."

Zel suddenly remembered his prior assessment of Rezo and Lina's relationship. What if something transpired between them that might cause some embarrassment to Lina now? This thought almost sent him into a panic. "Is there anything that happened that the whole town can't hear about? This isn't going to turn into a scandal, is it?"

"Are you too gentlemanly to ask me exactly what you're thinking?" she asked with a wicked smile.

"No," Zel said sternly.

"Then ask me!" she demanded.

"Were you in love with him?" he asked, realizing perfectly well that the question she was asking him to ask was if she had slept with Rezo or not, but Zel couldn't ask that question. To him, it wasn't a matter of whether or not he was a gentleman, but whether or not he wanted to know the answer.

She backed up and came in contact with the wall. "Zel," she whispered. "Why aren't you ready to believe the worst of me? You really have no reason to try and protect me from what anyone might say of me." Her lips trembled like she might start to cry.

Zel moved to get up, hoping to be able to comfort her, but she motioned for him to stay sitting, and dried her own tears.

"There is no scandal involving Rezo and I; at least, not one that I know about. I'm just a little taken back by your attitude towards me. I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't have come in here to take your head off. I just keep on thinking that you are just like every other aristocrat I have ever met – that you care so much for what everyone is saying about everyone. Then when I am positive I have you all figured out you ask me if I was in love with Rezo instead of if your plan will be destroyed because of some past misbehaviour with your brother. Well, let me tell you – I was never in love with Rezo. I never let him even touch me. I wouldn't dance with him when he asked me, and I wouldn't let him kiss my hand even. I thought this was a clear message that I was not interested, but it only seemed to draw him in more. I doubt very much that very many woman have treated him like I did, but I could see that he wasn't a good man for me."

"That's fine Lina. You don't have to say anymore," Zel said quietly.

"No," she said frantically. "You don't understand. He wouldn't leave me alone. He came to the house nearly every day, he brought me gifts, and he wouldn't give up – no matter what I told him. He was part of the reason I ran away with the gypsies. I couldn't stand it anymore. It was like he was obsessed with getting me."

"Lina! That's enough – you're getting hysterical," Zel said, jumping to his feet and pulling her into his arms. "Don't make yourself unhappy. I'll stay by your side all the time if necessary so you never have another moment alone with him. That is what is bothering you, isn't it? That you were left alone with him?"

She nodded against his nightshirt, and he cradled her head close to him.

It had never occurred to Zelgadis that Rezo could behave in such a way towards a woman, but after Zel gave it some thought, it didn't seem entirely impossible. Rezo did have a way of becoming unusually fixated with certain objects and hobbies.

"Has Rezo got a key to my door?" Lina asked, seeming to calm down a little. "I couldn't sleep in that room, thinking that he might be able to come in."

Zel shook his head. "I'm sorry Lina. I think he does have a key to your room, and every other room in the house. But don't worry," Zel said, thinking up a plan. "I'll take off the door knob to my dressing room and put it on your room, so that even if he does try to come into your room, he'll have a devil of a time figuring out which key."

"Will that really be enough to keep him out?" she asked seriously.

Zel had never thought that his brother could cause such anxiety in a person before. He was quite stunned. But he wanted to make Lina feel better. "Then, tomorrow, I'll go relieve him of the master set of keys. Will that satisfy you?"

She nodded.

"Good," he said, putting his fingers in her hair and pulling her close to him again. Her arms were around his torso, and heaving of her chest with her breath had become more regular. Zel had never experienced this kind of closeness with another person, and he was amazed at how easy it came to him. He had never seen it in his nature to be able to be so gentle, but when it came to touching her, he couldn't be anything but gentle. What he really wanted to do was pick her up and slide her into his own bed, so that he could keep on making her feel safe, but he had to return her to her own room or there would be trouble in the morning. For a moment, he was desperately glad that their wedding was only two months away, and then he remembered.

That it was all a lie.

* * *

Author's Notes: Thank-you everyone who reviewed. You really make me want to keep writing. Thank-you again for your support. Don't worry - there's lots more to come. 


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

When Zelgadis arose the next morning he found out two very interesting facts. The first was that his mother had invited Lady Filia and Miss Luna Inverse over for tea that day. He and Lina absolutely had to attend. Not that Zel would have thought of trying to skip out. Such a thing was out of the question.

The second thing wouldn't have been discovered if Lina hadn't managed to convince his mother that she needed a tour of the estate. Zel didn't know how she did it when his mother was totally taken up not only with the tea that was to take place that afternoon, but also with preparations for their engagement party. However, Lina somehow made her think that it was extremely important, and so they were spared for an hour or so to tour the grounds.

"We have a problem," Lina said simply as soon as they were alone.

"What is it?" Zel asked, knowing it must be important if she couldn't wait any longer to tell him.

"I found this on my dressing table this morning," she said, slipping Zel a piece of paper. "I don't know exactly when it was left there. It might have been put there before I went to bed, or when I was in your room, or even after I fell asleep. In any case, I didn't find it until this morning."

Zel flipped over the paper. It read: "Where did you get the dress?" It wasn't signed or anything, but it was obviously a man's writing.

"Do you think Rezo left it?" Zel asked.

"Of course Rezo left it," she said briefly, looking at Zel as though he were an idiot.

"What a weird question though," Zel said, ignoring her look. "Do you have any idea what it means?"

"No. I was hoping you might have some idea what he was talking about."

"I'm sorry. I don't know either."

"That also leaves the other important question of when he left it. Do you think he knows that I went to go see you during the night? That might not be interpreted well," she said, keeping her head up as if she didn't care.

"You think he might publicize it?" Zel asked.

"No, not really," she said, linking her arm with Zel's and straightening her hat with the other hand. "I think that he'd go insane with jealousy and do something uncalled for, but I don't think ruining my reputation would be part of whatever he'd do."

"Why's that?"

She smiled blithely, "Because he knows that it wouldn't hurt me. I wouldn't care one bit if he spread all over England that I had a midnight encounter with you. Once again, I've found another benefit of not being lady like. However, two months really feels like a long time before we can get this wrapped up. Oh, and I wanted to ask you one other thing. Were you serious when you said that you would take me to India?"

"I was . . . but why do you want to go to India?"

"Oh, I just thought that might be a better place for us to part than here in England."

This declaration seemed incredible to Zelgadis. "I can't leave you alone in India!" he exclaimed.

"Why not?" Lina asked. "It was all well and good when I was going to desert you to run away with the gypsies here in England, but running away in India is totally unacceptable to you, why?"

"In England, at least I wouldn't have to worry about you getting dragged away by your hair. You would be with people you knew and people who would protect you. I couldn't leave you alone in a foreign country."

Lina shrugged her shoulders. "Please don't talk to me like I can't take care of myself. Did you have a chance to steal Rezo's keys yet?" she asked, changing the subject.

The change in topic was just too obvious for Zel to miss, but he decided to let _that_ conversation go for the time being. "I apologize, but I haven't had time. This morning has been a sort of rushed. I should have a chance when we go back to the house though. You're not angry, are you?" Zel asked when he saw her crestfallen face.

"No," she said quickly. "It would have been unrealistic for you to have gotten them already. Please just don't forget."

"I won't forget," Zel said easily. "Is he really _that_ bad?"

"If you don't know how horrific he is, then you don't know him," she said simply and turned her away from Zelgadis to examine some of the garden's flowers more carefully.

* * *

When Zel finally got into the house he sent Miss Amelia herself up to help Lina change. This was an unusually small task for the housekeeper at a large estate, but somehow Zel knew that Miss Amelia would not mind. After all, she had heard the odd conversation between Lina and Rezo in the sitting room the day before, so hopefully, she would understand why she was asked to help Lina personally. 

Immediately after parting with Lina and Miss Amelia, Zelgadis went directly to Rezo's study where he thought Rezo probably kept the master key ring. He knocked on the door politely before allowing himself entrance. "Rezo?" he asked cautiously as he pocked his head in. When he didn't see his brother, he quickly jammed the rest of his body in the room and shut the door behind him.

Zel rummaged through Rezo's desk, and through the liquor cabinet behind it. It actually wasn't long before he felt as though he had turned the entire place upside down looking for the keys. Where did Rezo keep them?

"Looking for something?" Rezo suddenly asked from the door.

"Not really," Zel said quickly, looking for an excuse. "I just wanted to have a few moments to myself. I'm sure you can guess how hectic it has immediately become for me – having a fiancée and everything. I'm worn out."

"Miss Lina must be hard on you," Rezo said, approaching the desk.

Zel didn't like the look in Rezo's eyes. He had never seen his brother look at him like that. "It's not Miss Lina," he said, remembering that he needed to be as formal as Rezo. "It's mother, and the panic of planning everything so quickly. I'm sure you can understand."

"Oh, I understand perfectly," Rezo said with a dark look. "Actually, Mother is looking for you right now," he said after a pause.

"Then I'd better not keep her waiting," Zel said as he swiftly made his way to the door.

* * *

Zel was very confused about his brother's behaviour, and it puzzled him throughout the tea with Lady Filia and Miss Inverse. 

He had been worried that Luna might cause a bit of a scene, but she didn't. She greeted Lina properly, and dedicated much of her conversation to her, asking her all sorts of questions. It might have been Zelgadis, but Luna seemed relieved. Well, that wasn't really surprising since Lina had been a disgrace to their family and was now well on her way to legitimizing everything. That alone must have pleased a sister out on the prowl for a good husband. It didn't seem that Luna regretted losing her chance for _him_ though. Maybe all that talk about Luna liking him was all garbage. Oh well, she had only met him once, so maybe her feelings weren't very much engaged. It was just as well.

Rezo sat with his tea, and made no effort whatever to converse with anyone. No one appeared to notice his uncommunicative manner except Zelgadis.

Zel wanted to observe him more closely, but found that his eyes always trailed back to Lina. She was looking lovely in a mint green dress and sitting with just the tips of her matching slippers showing under the hem of her dress. Thank goodness they had past the days when showing one's ankles was indecent, but only just barely, which was why she was only showing the toes of her slippers. Her calico dress had not even attempted to be that modest, but it didn't seem to matter what she wore. She looked lovely no matter what – like a little red bird that wouldn't stay by you long enough for you to get a good look at it. Yes, a bird that would always jump away.

All of the women were very busy speaking of the engagement party, but suddenly the conversation took turn in a very different direction.

"Miss Lina, my darling, where do you plan to have your wedding dress made?" Zel's mother asked abruptly. "If you haven't got any plans, I know the best dressmaker, who could do you up just right."

Zel remembered Miss Eris Claire, and that he had promised her that she could make Lina's wedding dress. Zel was sure Lina remembered that promise as well for she quickly made her answer.

"I beg your pardon madam, but I have already promised my personal dressmaker that she would have that privilege."

"Since when do you have a personal seamstress?" Luna exclaimed.

"Just recently," Lina said, not losing her cool. "My fiancée was kind enough to introduce me to a great one."

This declaration seemed to shock everyone in the room, excluding only Luna, who obviously did not know that Zelgadis was one of the most famous recluses in the neighbourhood. Zelgadis knew that to claim that he knew of any tailors, seamstresses, or dressmakers was laughable. He'd have to repair the blunder quickly.

"What!" his mother cried out in surprise.

Zel waved his hand to shrug it off and tried to act nonchalant as he responded with a breezy, "It was only because the shop was recommended so highly to me."

"What shop was it?" Lady Filia asked. "Perhaps we all ought to patron it if its reputation is so high."

Zelgadis hesitated for a moment, not entirely sure what he ought to say. Miss Claire had stressed that her establishment did not have a good reputation.

Zel opened his mouth to squeal his way out of having to answer properly, when Rezo suddenly asked Lady Filia, "Are you still having that problem with gypsies poaching pheasant on your land?"

"Actually, no," Lady Filia answered, with her eyebrows drawn together. "The gypsies seem to have gone away."

With that the conversation changed to discussing the gypsies, but this discussion seemed to distress Luna a great deal and she quickly found another topic to occupy them all. It seemed to Zelgadis that she wanted to avoid talking about Lina's past, which pleased Zelgadis well. It made him like Luna better as well. Especially when he recognized that Rezo only mentioned the gypsies as a way to torment Lina – who would not be tormented – and looked completely tranquil.

It suddenly occurred to Zelgadis that if Lina's escapade with the gypsies was revealed to his mother, she wouldn't look on the match with any favour whatsoever. That would ruin their plans completely, as his mother's approval was the most important factor in all of this. Rezo's comment revealed that he knew that Lina had been living with the gypsies. Zel remembered Lina's comment about how 'horrific' Rezo was and wondered if Rezo would deliberately ruin their wedding plans for his own ends.

Zel was uncertain as to whether or not he believed Rezo would use methods like that, when if Lina's reputation was destroyed Rezo could not marry her either. But at least Zel had stopped deluding himself about one fact; Rezo definitely wanted Lina.

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	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters. They are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Shoko Yoshinaka.

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**Chapter Ten**

The engagement party had come and gone, and Zelgadis was beginning to wonder if Rezo really did have any plans to break up he and Lina's wedding. It was starting to look unlikely, but the hungry look that Zel had begun to notice in Rezo's eyes whenever he looked at Lina had not disappeared. Zel didn't know why Rezo wasn't doing anything when he obviously wanted Lina so much. One day Zel asked Lina about this. He wanted to know if she was keeping Rezo at bay.

Lina shrugged her shoulders and gave Zel a little smile. "I'm blackmailing him of course."

"Of course?" Zel asked, not quite understanding.

"Colonel Greywers," she said saucily, "you are a much smarter man than you know."

"What are you talking about? I think you'd better tell me."

"You mean you haven't figured it out?" she asked with a light laugh.

Zel shook his head to indicate that he hadn't.

"Well, suffice it to say that Mr. Rezo Greywers has not been a very good boy. You and your mother obviously have no clue exactly how far he's strayed from respectability behind closed doors. I was under the impression that he was trying to disentangle himself from certain . . . how shall I say . . . problems that would be unbecoming of any gentleman. Of course, he knows that I was living with the gypsies, but that's not half as disrespectable as what he's been doing."

"You know what he's been doing?" Zel asked curiously.

She nodded. "He could tell on me if he wanted to, but it wouldn't be half as damaging as what I could do to him if I told. Have you been worrying that he would interfere with our plans?"

"Yes, I have," Zel admitted.

"Why didn't you talk to me about this sooner then? We could have had this cleared up much sooner," she said brushing one of her long curls out of her eyes.

"I didn't realize you were working magic behind my back," Zel said, not really believing what he was saying. How could he have said _that _with a straight face? But for Lina . . .

She eyed him cautiously, seeming to notice the strangeness of the comment. "Are you all right?" she asked him, examining him more carefully.

Lina and Zel had been together now for weeks. At their engagement party he had taken her in his arms and maneuvered her about the dance floor while everyone in the neighbourhood admired them. Her ball gown had rustled and the jewels at her throat gleamed under the lamp light. She had smiled up at him and made him feel . . . complete. She had a way of speaking to all his mother's acquaintances that made them feel perfectly at ease in a way that he could never master. That false face that he knew she could summon instantly was like a kind of sorcery, and he often had a hard time remembering that she was not really in love with him. She was just playing out the part he had asked her to play, and he usually felt ashamed of his feelings towards her when he would say good night to her at her door. She would turn suddenly and wink at him in a conspiratory fashion and he would remember that she didn't care for him at all.

On the nights that they were not expected to attend on guests at the estate he and Lina would walk out to meet the gypsies. Apparently they had not left the area, but none of them had Lina's skill with a shot gun, so they were short on pheasant. On these occasions, Zel would arrange with Miss Amelia for a large piece of meat to be left for him and Lina to take with them. Lina would wear her calico dress and he would wear his simplest clothing. Together they would walk out across the field to meet them and share in their jolly fire. There would be dancing and music. And of course the meat that Zelgadis had brought with him. Lina would dance and sing and play on her flute. After awhile she wouldn't be content with Zelgadis only clapping on the sidelines and would insist that he dance with her.

Zel had never exhausted himself dancing before. He had begun to regard parlor room dancing as little more than going for a walk. What Lina taught him how to do was completely different. The music seemed to climb under his skin and take possession of him. The moon looked huge, the food was good, and he felt like . . . he had never been alive.

And there was Lina. When she was with the gypsies that false face would never appear and it seemed that her true soul showed. Zel was enchanted with her in the ballroom, but when she acted like herself, she was completely captivating.

The night before their stroll in the park and their conversation about Rezo, they had been with the gypsies. They had been dancing together before the fire, and Zelgadis had become unusually engrossed in the song. He was forgetting things. He only saw Lina and her passionate eyes laughing into his, the way her hair framed her face, and the way she moved to the beat of the drums. He had put his arms around her waist, and she didn't seem to mind. Within a moment he had turned her around to face him and he had kissed her. For a moment, she kissed him back, and then suddenly, she pulled away and literally ran away from him.

At first he stood stupefied, wondering what it was that he had done wrong, and then he remembered their agreement. Why couldn't he remember the true state of things for at least ten minutes? He brushed his hair off his hot forehead, and stepped out of the ring of dancers where several couples were still dancing. He found that his vest had several buttons undone and quickly corrected them. Without Lina, he didn't want to continue dancing.

That was the moment when he realized the true state of affairs. He had thought that he would be able to keep himself under control. It had not occurred to him that it was possible for him to fall in love with her, but now he knew that there was no way he could have felt any different – not from the first moment he had met her.

Eventually, she came out of the tent where she had been hiding and suggested very coolly that they head back to the estate. He had complied instantly, hoping that she wasn't too angry with him.

He had paced the floor of his bed chamber that night, hoping he could find a way to make their marriage real, but he found that it was impossible until he found out how she felt. Zel wanted to tell her how _he_ felt, but found that instead of coming right out and saying what was on his mind he ended up saying odd little compliments that didn't fit with the order of conversation at all – like now.

Now she was standing there in his mother's garden, looking like a seraph, and obviously pretending that nothing had happened.

"Have you had any luck yet with the keys?" Lina suddenly asked him.

Zel had not forgotten his promise to retrieve the keys to her bedroom, but he had looked everywhere and had been unable to find anything. It was most maddening. _Where the devil did Rezo keep them?_ In the end, Zelgadis had found that he had no other choice, but to break the mechanism inside the door knob so that even if the key was inserted into the lock that it wouldn't be able to unlock the door. Zelgadis found that he really enjoyed doing this.

"Sorry, no," he said, shaking his head sadly. "He hasn't been prowling outside your door has he?"

"You know, it's very considerate what you've done with my door knob. I've really appreciated it. Do you think you'll be able to fix it after I go?" she asked, not looking at him.

Zel had no idea if he would be able to fix it, and honestly, he wasn't even going to try. Rezo could change the lock if he ever realized something was amiss. "I shouldn't have a problem fixing it," he said out loud. "Besides, we won't be staying at the mansion for much longer. The wedding is less than a week away, so after that, you won't have to worry about Rezo."

"I was meaning to ask you about that," Lina said turning to him.

"About what?"

"About the wedding. What exactly will happen after the wedding?" she asked, still keeping her eyes averted, even though she was facing him.

"Well, I thought I'd give you your choice there. I got a notice from General Metalium. He says that our company will be setting out for India within two weeks. I was planning on taking a ship to Dover in order to meet up with the company there," he paused. "I was planning on leaving the night of our wedding. I can either drop you off with the gypsies before I board the ship, or you could board with me and come to Dover with me, and come to India as you wished." Zel held his breath and waited for her answer. He wanted her to say she'd come with him to India more than anything else in the world. The only thing was that he didn't want her to turn tail and run away from him as soon as they got there. That would be far worse than leaving her in England.

She stayed still and didn't look at him. Minutes passed, but she still didn't say anything.

"Well?" he asked at last, when the tension had become enough for him.

"Well, I'll think about it," she answered dully, and moved to go back into the house.

Zel quickly met up with her in order to escort her, but he was very unsettled. He wished that she had been able to answer him.

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Author's Notes: Thanks to everyone who's following this. Please review! 


	11. Chapter 11

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**

Discaimer: I don't own Slayers. I'm just here for fun.

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**Chapter Eleven**

Zelgadis was in his dressing room on the morning of his wedding to Lina. He had already eaten his breakfast – alone – at a tiny table in his bed chamber, and was now dressing. Needless to say, he was a little surprised when a frantic little knock rapped on the door. For a moment he thought that it must be Lina and wasn't sure whether or not he ought to call for the knocker to enter. In the end he went and opened the door a crack, and was rewarded by an extremely unusual visitor. It was his mother. She was really the last person he wanted to see that morning, which was why he had breakfasted alone in his room instead of joining his mother and brother.

"What is it?" he asked her, and opened the door wide for her to pass.

"General Metalium has just shown up on our doorstep," she proclaimed frantically. "He says you said he could stay here if he was attending the wedding."

Zelgadis stood back and gaped.

General Metalium was a man slight of stature and large in the knowledge of his own importance. He had been Zelgadis' commanding officer since almost the beginning of Zel's military career. This is not to say that Zelgadis liked him – he didn't. The general had this ungodly habit of leaving critical information out of their strategy sessions. For instance, Zel's company would engage the enemy, defeat them, and afterwards find out that they had been pitted against an army twice their size or just the opposite would happen. They would be told that they were going to face a large force and they would slaughter the battalion, only to discover that there were not near as many soldiers as they were expecting. Sometimes they would be ambushed, and when Zelgadis reported it, the General simply nodded. Zel would clench his teeth and repress the urge to strike his superior officer. The man had known all along what would happen. Zelgadis was not the only officer who detested General Metalium's way of doing things, but the higher ups loved him because he got results, and the enlisted men worshiped him because his battles were victorious.

But what was the ass doing now? He knew that an invitation had been sent, but he didn't think for one second that the General would actually come. There was one other thing that was bothering Zel. He had _not_ told the general that he was welcome to stay with them.

"Why did you tell him he could stay here?" his mother asked sharply. "With all the cousins staying here really isn't room for him."

"I didn't invite him," Zelgadis said in his defense. "He's down stairs right now? I'll go tell him he's mistaken and that he'll have to go to the inn."

"You can't. It's too late. Rezo already said that he could stay."

"What?" Zelgadis exclaimed.

"He ground his teeth in that terrible way of his and told him we would be pleased to host him. Where are we going to put him? Rezo told me when we were alone that you would have to think up a place."

"Well, he can stay in my room," Zel said after a moment's thought. "I won't be sleeping here tonight anyway and Lina's room will probably need some work done in it after she leaves. See if there's a servant to come clear out my things that haven't already been packed."

"Miss Amelia has already arranged for all that," his mother said hastily.

"Well, then I suppose there's no real reason to be concerned then," Zel said, turning back to the mirror.

He thought he had dismissed her, but his mother didn't leave the room. She just stood there rubbing her hands together in an anxious manner.

"What is it? You seem nervous. Is it really so traumatizing for you to be marrying off one of your sons. Besides, I thought you wanted me to be married."

"It's not that," she said quickly, and Zelgadis experienced a moment of disappointment. He had thought for a moment that she really cared for him – ridiculous. "I do want you to get married. I just don't want your general here."

"Why is that?" Zel asked, now feeling very cold hearted towards her.

"I believe there is a little bit of a history of bad feelings between him and the Ut Copts."

Zelgadis laughed. It _had_ to be something like that.

"It's not funny Zelgadis! I don't think he gets along well with Lord Valgaav at all. It would be a pity if they were to quarrel and ruin your wedding, or if Lady Filia was displeased with us because he was a guest in our home."

"You worry about what the Ut Copt's think far too much," he said seriously, but not turning his head from his tying his cravat. "I'm not exactly pleased to have him here myself, but it would have been extraordinarily rude not to invite him to the wedding and even ruder still to refuse him accommodations. Not that this sort of thing is supposed to matter, but he could make things difficult for me if we are not extremely polite to him. So, even though having him here is a dreadful inconvenience, if you ever want me to become a general myself, then I recommend that we deal with the situation with poise."

Apparently, his mother had not thought of it in this shameless way before, and when Zelgadis showed the situation to her in this self-serving light – she couldn't agree with him more. Zel thought miserably at how good he had become of reading her mind and figuring out exactly what would please her. Well, it hadn't been just him – Lina had helped him figure out exactly how her mind worked.

After she left the room, in a considerably better mood than the one she had come in with, Zel was free to think about his bride-to-be. Nothing had changed between him and Lina over the past few days. He had hoped that she would be able to tell him where she was planning on going after the wedding, but she hadn't told him anything. When he finally asked her about it point blank the night before, she had skillfully changed the subject. It was then that he decided that she hadn't made up her mind yet. What could he do to make her decide to come with him? He racked his brain all that night, but hadn't been able to figure out what would touch her heart. Maybe today would be the last time he would be able to see her.

He felt sick.

He needed a plan. At last he decided there was nothing for him to do, but confess that he had fallen in love with her. But when would be the right moment? And what would he say? She seemed to dislike sentimentality, so an ardent confession of his feelings would probably have no affect whatever on her. It might even work to drive her away. After some considerable thought, he decided on _what_ he would say. The _when_ was easy – at the first possible moment.

After much preparation, Zelgadis stood beside the alter waiting for Lina to walk down the aisle towards him. Rezo stood beside him with an expression on his face that seemed to speak nothing but murder. Zel tried hard to ignore him, and felt rather wretched that his brother had to be his groomsman. Lina hadn't liked it either, but they had decided between the two of them that there was nothing else to be done. Luna was Lina's maid of honour and she declared that she needed no bridesmaids.

Finally, Lina stood in the doorway of the chapel. The sun shown behind her and illuminated her like she was an angel. Rezo gasped. Zel kicked him in the shin without turning to look at him. Then he looked around the chapel to make sure no one saw. It didn't look like anyone noticed and Rezo made no sound – everyone was watching Lina, and she looked lovely. The dress Eris made for her was one-of-a-kind and beautiful beyond Zel's ability to describe it. He wanted to call it a curious mix of sky and sea, because he knew no other way to explain. He silently thanked Eris for her hard work. Since they were trying to please his mother's socialite friends, he knew the dress would be acceptable to even the harshest critic.

The ceremony itself was long, or at least it felt long to Zelgadis who was waiting for his moment to tell her how he felt. It might have been only a few minutes, but it dragged on forever to Zel.

At last the priest gave him his permission to kiss Lina. Zel turned to her and lifted her veil. He bent and kissed her. When the kiss was over he pulled her close to him and embraced her taking the opportunity to whisper into her ear, "I want you to come to India with me." He believed this was the perfect thing to say to her. It _implied_ his true feelings for her without being overly sentimental. She had always seemed so disdainful towards great shows of feeling anyway. Then he pulled away from her. Her eyes looked dark and Zelgadis couldn't read what she was thinking.

There wasn't time to ask her though and he began leading her back down the aisle with a healthy smile on his face, exactly the expression he imagined Lina was wearing now for their guests. He wanted to be as controlled as she was even though his heart was beating so hard and his feelings were racing through him so quickly.

He helped her into the carriage that was waiting to take them to the banquet hall. Zelgadis waved to their guests and got into the carriage himself. He and Lina waved again and were driven away from the church. He was dying to know how she had taken his confession.

Zelgadis looked across at Lina, but she was staring out the window with her chin tilted decidedly up.

"What is it?" he asked her, suddenly noticing that there was something seriously wrong with her. She seemed completely out of sorts.

"It's nothing Zelgadis," she said coolly and continued to gaze out the window. Her jaw was clenched tight.

"It's not 'nothing' – did I say something wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. Then suddenly she turned to him and blazed, "Wasn't I supposed to get something out of this deal? If I was I completely forget what it was. If it was just to have treasure-hunting men leave me alone than I don't know if it was worth it."

Zel was completely thrown back by her words, but being an army man it didn't take long for him to get control over himself. "Are you regretting marrying me already?" he asked incredibly dryly.

"You said _that_ right in the middle of everything. I really didn't like being put on the spot like that. How was I supposed to answer you there?"

"You can answer me now," he insisted.

Lina shook her hair. "I had no idea you _wanted_ me to go to India with you. You could have told me sooner. I don't know why I said that I wanted to go to India. I wouldn't want to go with the military. I'm against our occupation in India and going with the military as part of their company would be so . . . repugnant to my feelings."

Zel didn't realize it, but soon he was saying, "I didn't realize you objected to me because I was a military officer. I thought we were friends and you would take pleasure in the trip. I would have enjoyed having you with me."

"'Friends'! You think of me as your 'friend'?" she exclaimed.

"Of course," he said, acting indifferent as he organized his cuff and jacket sleeve.

"Well, I'm glad you understand that I won't be going to India with you. You can drop me off in the woods after the ball tonight and then return to your duty," she said stiffly.

Zel wanted to ask her why she was suddenly behaving the way she was. Why was she speaking so coldly him? Had he phrased his question to her badly? Had he asked her so badly that he couldn't make it right? He would have to try again.

"Lina," he said, trying not to act like he was discussing a personnel issue with one of his lieutenants, and fearing that he wasn't accomplishing his goal. He had never had cause to discuss his feelings in this open way before. He thought she wouldn't appreciate an open display of feeling, but perhaps he was wrong. "I apologize that I said that in front of everyone. I had no idea that it would make you uncomfortable. What I wanted to say was that . . . I've fallen in love with you." He stopped there, not wanted to proceed unless it was welcomed.

Her eyes were the size of moons as she stared at him. "You don't love me Zelgadis," she said at last, as though it was very painful.

"I do," he said, not breaking eye contact with her.

"No, you don't," she said looking away from him. "If you loved me, you would not ask me to go to India with you. You told me once that you could not risk breaking the heart of the woman you loved by being wounded or killed on the field of battle. If you loved me, you would not go off to fight anyone, and if we were truly of one mind," she continued. "Then you would be against the army as well, but that's only a minor concern. Instead, you want me to go with you. If we had a relationship like you are proposing, would I just be a tag along? I'm not the woman you love if you would leave me to go away to fight. I think we should stay apart until you find the woman you are really in love with."

Zel felt as though his heart were being ripped from his chest. He couldn't believe that she remembered that he said that. He couldn't say anything at first.

"Don't you have anything to say?" Lina asked.

"I don't know what to say," he said breathlessly. "If I were to leave the military I would be penniless with no occupation to fall back on. I have not been trained in anything. You must understand that when I joined the army I had about as much hope of finding a lover as fly to the moon. I hadn't much money to begin with, but my compensation from my career has paid for everything I promised to pay for in this arrangement. If I were to leave, I would be forced to rely on you for financial support, which is the LAST thing I wanted out of all of this. I never wanted to touch your money. So, in order to keep myself independent from your wealth I must continue. I must also point out very quickly that I will probably not be required to fight during this trip to India."

"It doesn't matter if you'll be required to fight or not. The fact that you're not willing to leave proves that you don't truly care for me. And as far as I'm concerned, the money isn't important at all. Since you're not concerned about your respectability, then why not run away with me and live with the gypsies? It costs nothing to live with them."

Zel just looked at her, and didn't know what to do at all.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers. I'm just here for the food.

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**Chapter Twelve**

The banquet and ball taking place at the Greywers Estate were lovely, as in the rooms prepared and the feast looked lovely, but Zelgadis didn't feel it. He was congratulated by everyone. Lord and Lady Ut Copt made a show of their generosity by giving Lina and Zelgadis a carriage. He absently watched the stack of gifts grow and he wondered what would happen to all of them after the wedding. His mother appeared to be thinking the same thing and asked him what ought to be done with them. He said they should be put into storage until he returned from India. Lina's ears seemed to perk up at that statement.

When they were on the dance floor together for a waltz, she asked him about the comment. "Does that mean you haven't taken my suggestion about living with the gypsies seriously?"

"It means nothing of the sort," Zel answered, feeling cornered. He still didn't know what to do. "What else am I supposed to tell her? From the way things are going all the gifts will have to be sent back anyway. It would probably be better to send them back unopened."

"As you say," she said gravely.

Zel frowned and pulled her closer to him in the dance. He found himself looking at the floor over her shoulder. He didn't want to look at the faces of the people watching him. It wasn't that he cared what they thought, but it bothered him the situation was not what they saw. He wasn't the young man happily married he wished to be.

Could he live with the gypsies? He had been around them during the spare moments that he and Lina had over the past few weeks. He hadn't really talked to them much. They hadn't really seemed inclined to talk to him either. He would get a few slaps on the back by some of the men when he brought the meat into the camp, but other than that they only seemed to tolerate him like he was a source of income. If Lina didn't draw him into conversation . . . he knew he would have been left out completely.

Then there had been Lina's conversation with the gypsy fortune teller . . . what had she told Lina to make her agree to marry him with so little conversation? She said that she would never tell him, but . . .

"Lina," he said suddenly. "What did the fortune teller tell you the night we struck this bargain?"

"I said I'd never tell," she said, and she smiled her true smile for the first time that day.

"If I went and asked her, would she tell me what she told you?" he persisted, adding what mirth he could to his tone.

Suddenly, a look of real concern came across her face. "You MUST promise me that you will do no such thing."

"Why?" Zel asked, but before Lina could answer, General Metallium interrupted them and cut in. Zelgadis allowed the violet clad fop to take Lina from him and then wandered off the dance floor a little bewildered, but he hadn't promised Lina anything.

He took the chance to look around for Rezo. It seemed that Rezo was playing the host well and was dancing with Lady Filia. Doubtless, his mother was somewhere squealing over how fortunate she was.

Zel stood looking over the dance floor thinking even more seriously about what he could do. It was interesting to watch Lina. She seemed to be entertaining General Metalium quite well – at least he looked entertained. She smiled charmingly at her partner, but it didn't bother Zelgadis. He knew that the smile she gave him was as hollow as the goblet of wine he had just downed.

Again he thought about what she said when she asked him to live with her and the gypsies. Was that her way of saying that they would live as husband and wife? Somehow he didn't think that was the case. Besides the kiss she had given him the first night they met and harmless flirting along the way, she had done nothing to indicate that she was truly interested in him in a romantic way. One thing was for certain, there was no way he would agree to go with her without knowing what the situation was going to be when he got there. If she was only keeping him with her as her dog or as her friend, he would have to turn his back on her and part ways with her as they had originally planned. A man could only take so much, and being close to her without the return of any of his feelings was too much to ask of himself. It was going to be difficult, but he would have to ask her for a confession of her feelings if he was going to throw away his life. Only then could he make his decision.

There was one other thing as well. What had that fortune teller told Lina? And why was she so desperate to keep it from him? He was more intrigued than ever. He was tempted to walk out of the ball right then and gallop with all speed to where he knew the gypsies were camped that night to ask her. If he was fast enough, he might only be gone for a little under an hour. Although, if he did that someone would definitely notice and that would defeat what they had set out to do in the first place. He had please his mother and her friends, at least this one night, so he couldn't go missing at a ball celebrating his wedding.

The evening dragged on, but at last the hour came for Lina and him to depart. Zel had ordered for all the lamps to be turned down and only the candles to be left lit for his and Lina's last dance together. No one else was allowed on the floor with them. When he had made the preparations for this night, he thought that these would be his last moments with her – the woman he loved. He wanted it to be beautiful for him, because it was going to be the precious moment to carry him through the rest of his life. As he took her gloved hand with his own gloved hand, he thought that this moment must be either much grander than he had anticipated or much more painful. This would be the moment he would ask her how she felt. There was no time left to them. He clenched his jaw to hide his nervousness, and span her in his arms as gallantly as he could.

"Have I told you today how beautiful you look?" he whispered into her ear.

"No," she said.

"You do. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before," he said quietly.

"Zel, why do we have to do this?" she asked, and Zelgadis thought he heard tears on her voice. "Why couldn't we have met somewhere else, at a different time, when it wouldn't have been so difficult for us to be together?"

"I'm not sure," he said, suddenly able to feel confident. Perhaps it was because now he knew that she wasn't as steady in her conviction as he thought she was.

"Must we really part tonight? Will you really go to India?" she looked up at him with defiant eyes.

He loved her eyes.

"That depends on you . . . would you be my wife?"

"Zel . . . I . . ."

"What do you really want from me, Lina? You can't want my money, I don't have any. You have already told me that you don't think I'm handsome."

"I didn't say that. I said that I didn't kiss you because you were handsome, but that I liked the way you looked at me," she injected.

"I must have misunderstood you. All the same," he said drawing her close to him and kissing her lightly on her temple, "if you're not in love with me . . . I'll have to go away."

"That's it?"

"You can have your annulment tomorrow if you want it, though I won't like to let you go."

Lina turned her face away from him. "You're cruel," she said, the gloss on her lips shining in the candlelight.

"Of course I'm cruel. I never hid from you what I am. I'm a soldier, and a commander. Of course I've done cruel things. What did you think?"

"I thought you were different!" she exclaimed.

"From what?"

"From every other nobleman I've met," she said looking into his eyes.

"You knew what I was when you agreed to all this. Did you think I was going to change? Our association is life-long, whether we part tonight or not. I promised that I would always protect you and I meant it. I would always be there for you if you became my wife 'in name only'. Do you think you would get a promise like that from just anyone? I can't even describe to you the dedication I would give you if you became my real wife."

"You would come live with the gypsies?"

"If you would be there, I would go anywhere," he said recklessly. "But you must love me."

She leaned up and whispered something in his ear.

The kiss Zel gave Lina in front of everyone caused several gasps and exclamations throughout their guests, but Zel didn't care. There was not enough breath in his body to outlast the adoration he felt for her at the moment she said the words . . .

I love you.

After the dance was over, Lina and Luna went to go change Lina into her going-away dress. She was not expected to travel in her gown, and Zelgadis used the time to find General Metallium. He had to tell him that he wouldn't be going to India after all and would be resigning his post. Zelgadis invited him into Rezo's study to break the news to him.

Xellos took the news indifferently, and remarked, "But I would rather not accept your resignation in this fashion, especially on the night of your wedding. If you still want to resign before we push off for India, just have it written up and delivered. I'd rather have such things in writing anyway."

"I appreciate your consideration," Zel said moving to leave the room.

"Anyway, I should have known," Xellos said, leaning against the desk and lighting a long cigarette.

"Should have known what?"

"Just that you'd leave the army if you ever managed to marry a woman with a little money. I must say you've done well for yourself Zelgadis."

Zel stopped himself from correcting the General. He had called Zel by his name instead of by his rank, and Zel was just about to correct him when he realized that he couldn't. He had said he was going to leave the army, so his rank didn't apply to him anymore if he gave it up. He was also enraged by what Xellos had said about Lina. He swiftly reminded himself that she didn't care what anyone thought about her and that he shouldn't care either.

He turned his back on Xellos and strode out of the room, before he said something he might regret.

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Authors Notes: Please review! 


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers. I'm just bored.

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

Zelgadis and Lina planned to drive the carriage supplied by Lady and Lord Ut Copt to the camp of the gypsies. Rezo had allowed his own coachman to drive them, but as soon as they were out of view, Zelgadis ordered the man to walk back to the house as he said he didn't really need a driver. This seemed incredible to the man, but he stepped down and headed back towards the house. Zel jumped up to the driver's seat and took the reins in his hands.

"Can I come up too?" Lina asked happily after Zelgadis had told her about his resignation.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay in the back and enjoy your last ride as a lady before you renounce society for all time? You might not get a luxury like this again," Zelgadis said cheerfully.

"Well, I think I'd rather see the lights of the camp from the front. I'm sure they'll be spectacular tonight, since it's our wedding." She let herself out of the carriage and brought up her hand for Zelgadis to lift her up beside him. "I think they might be holding a dance for us tonight. Do you think you could dance a few more rounds?" she asked plunking herself beside him, in a very unladylike gesture.

"After what we've been through tonight? I'm not sure, but then, maybe I'll have the energy," he said.

He whipped the horses.

"But first, we'll have to set up my tent. I told them I was coming, but I doubt anyone bothered to set it up. Then maybe we can dance a couple rounds to the fiddle. Won't that be fun, especially after that stuffed-shirt affair we just suffered through? It will be a relief to be myself again."

"I'm sure it will be," Zelgadis said, intoxicated by the feeling of freedom racing through his body. Perhaps he would be able to be himself in this place, away from convention, away from formality, away from his mother. Perhaps this was the way for him to feel alive for the first time in his life. Oh, he was excited. He hoped the night would never end.

Lina was wrong they the gypsies hadn't set up their tent – they had prepared it completely for Lina and her husband. It was draped with beautiful emerald garlands. The wedding bed inside was made, with many cushions piled and flower petals scattered over the faded spread.

The bonfire raged high, and the melodies played by Lina's friends were fast and expressive, demanding that Zelgadis dance for them. Lina dragged him before the fire and got everyone able to join hands in a wild dance before the flames, while those who didn't dance either played their instruments or clapped their hands. Round and round they went to the beat of the music and of Zel's own heart. He had never felt this way before.

He had never felt this free – like nothing in the whole world matter except this moment; the moment where he found a place where he belonged. Even if no one here, or in the whole world, cared for him, as long as Lina felt as strongly as he believed she did there was nothing else that mattered. As long as she loved him for himself, and no other reason, than he could be happy for the rest of his life. He looked across the flames at her, and felt her bear hand in his. She was smiling and laughing, dancing the way she did.

Oh, he loved her!

Eventually, he separated himself from the crowd. If he didn't get a drink he would parish for thirst. He went and stood next to a swarthy gypsy who was holding the dipper to the community water pitcher, and asked him for a drink. The man gave him the ladle and moved away. Zel poured the first scoop over his head and patently drank the second cup. He really ought to quit drinking liquor, he decided. Getting sloshed really wasn't as exciting as it had been when he was younger. Now it just seemed like something to numb his brain and weaken his heart. And as his heart had never seemed stronger, it seemed ridiculous that he would need something to stabilize him. He didn't want to depend on anything anymore.

Just then he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. The gypsy fortune teller, Madam Martina, was standing outside her tent, flipping the lid of his old tinderbox open and shut. It was making the smallest clicking noise, but Zel was somehow able to hear it over the music. Then he remembered! What had the woman said to Lina? He immediately strode over to her.

"Good evening," he said politely.

She turned on him and ducked to enter her tent. At first Zel thought he had been completely snubbed, but then she shouted for him to follow her and to shut the flap behind him. Zel obeyed and entered, sitting down on the rug in front of her as he had before.

"Will I have to pay you for my fortune tonight?" Zel asked laughing. He was at ease with this woman, so he felt comfortable enough to joke with her.

"Not tonight," she said, lighting her pipe. "Just consider anything I say to be a wedding present."

"Why thank-you," Zel said.

She looked closely at Zelgadis. "You're a very handsome young man you know."

"Am I?" he asked, a little uncomfortable at the comment.

"It's good that you've decided to stay with us. Handsome children always seem to portray the true spirit of the gypsies better than ugly children. You and daughter Lina will have beautiful children. Of that, you can be certain, but you don't need someone with the 'sight' to tell you that. Beautiful parents make beautiful children."

"You know, I've often wondered what it was you said to Lina that night you told her fortune."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No," Zel admitted.

"Did you want to know?"

"Of course," Zel said. "But I didn't think you would tell me. Isn't someone's fortune confidential?"

"Lina sat here beside me when I told you your fortune. I never keep fortunes secret. And as a matter of fact I did not tell Lina her fortune that night at all. She simply wanted to talk to me about the fortune I gave you. She understood it very well. Sometimes that girl verges on being magical, but she doesn't quite have the clarity of sight I have in order to tell fortunes. Maybe someday . . ."

"You told me I was marked for misfortune, and that you saw a beast in my eyes."

"A chimera," she corrected him steadily.

Zelgadis didn't understand what the fortune teller was telling him. He tried, but it seemed to him that she was purposefully speaking in riddles. He understood misfortune, but why would she see a chimera in his eyes? It didn't make any sense.

"What did you tell Lina after I left?" he asked.

"Just the interpretation, but she knew it before I started speaking. I told you she is clever. But I was surprised when I heard she was planning on marrying you. I thought for certain she would steer clear of a man who obviously had such a painful destiny ahead of him. I guess she thought she could stop something bad from happening to you. What a brave girl!" Those words were not said as though praising Lina for her attributes, but instead seemed to be mocking her for her stupidity. "And she may be right," the gypsy woman continued.

"Are you saying she wanted to protect me from a hard future?" Zel asked, feeling something icy chasing up his spine.

"It's only my opinion," she said, taking a heavy draw on her pipe.

"What does the chimera symbolize?" Zel asked, suddenly getting an idea. "Was it such a bad omen that she would agree to marry a stranger in order to save him from that future?"

"A chimera is not just one beast, but many," she said mysteriously.

"I don't understand," Zel said, feeling the cloth of his cravat tight around his throat. He had already undone it, but suddenly he felt very hot. This conversation was burning him. He didn't like what the fortune teller was implying – that there was another reason Lina was with him. "A man is not a beast!" he exclaimed, lashing out involuntarily.

"Aren't they?" she questioned, not allowing Zelgadis to rile her.

Zel ground his teeth, annoyed that he had allowed her to make him angry so easily. He made himself take a deep breath to calm himself. "All right," he said determinedly, "please tell me exactly what the chimera symbolizes. I'm thickheaded, so please explain it as simply as you can."

"Of course, Master Greywers," the woman said condescendingly.

He rolled his eyes. "You must know that I've given up everything tonight to be with Lina. Is treating me like that now really necessary?"

She clucked her tongue and knocked the ashes out of her pipe. It was a few moments before she proceeded. "Do you know much about the gypsies?" she asked at last.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know how we've been pushed out and pushed around like we're nothing and nobody?"

"Of course," he answered vaguely, not understanding how this could possibly have anything to do with their current conversation.

"What kind of men do you think are responsible for that kind of treatment?"

The cold in his spine and the heat in his neck suddenly came back to him with all force possible. Zelgadis felt sick to his stomach. He thought he might throw up, as all-at-once he realized what it was the gypsy woman was talking about. She was talking about men in power who became 'beasts' through oppression. They were even called that very name by rebels, but he had never thought that he could become a person who treated people that way, and that was exactly what the fortune teller was saying.

"Are you saying that I'll dominate and subjugate people who I have authority over? I am the lord of no domain. I have always valued the lives of the men who have served under me. I have even been kind to my mother, who was hardly ever kind to me. But, you're not just speaking of one kind of beast, the kind of lord who treats those under him badly. You said a chimera was many beasts – so there's no limit to the different ways I could abuse anyone who has anything to do with me. I could harm my wife, my children, those I work with and my enemies," he paused, thinking. "How is it possible that my heart would be hardened enough to commit the atrocities you are ready to convict me of? That's why you've treated me the way you have tonight, isn't it? You're not totally convinced that the future you saw in my eyes has been averted, are you?"

The woman nodded. "Stay close to Lina. That's the only way you can be stopped."

"By the love of a good woman?" he practically spat. "That's why she wanted to stop me from going to India!" With that wild exclamation, he jumped to his feet. "She doesn't love me. She would do anything to stop me from becoming the monster you foretold; even to the point of selling herself to a man she didn't love." The realization horrified Zel, and he found his mind reeling. "After all – how could she love a monster? The pain she must be suffering to be with me. How I must repulse her . . ."

He didn't wait for the fortune teller to answer, and instead stumbled out of her tent. He couldn't get a hold of his mind, yet he couldn't hide from the horror of what he had just learned. Lina was simply trying to keep him away from the army, away from his family, away from a structured society where it was possible for him to get power over anyone. He reminded himself bitterly that it wasn't impossible for him to inherit the family estate. All that needed to happen was for Rezo to die. She probably thought that he would become evil enough to plot the murder of his own brother. Not to mention the ways a clever man could manipulate anyone he wished. But, even on the lowest levels of authority, he was still a man and a man had authority over his wife. She probably expected him to abuse her in the future, and still she held her face up to meet his eyes. This way, she would be the only person he would be able to hurt. Her self sacrifice crushed his heart.

He walked unsteady into the woods, not bothering to dodge or avoid the branches of the trees. He felt he was in the middle of a nightmare that he would not wake from. The pain was too much to handle, as he was certain all hope of happiness could never be his again. His mind kept chanting the words: _she thinks you're a monster, she thinks you're a monster, SHE THINKS YOU'RE A MONSTER_.

He needed a drink. No, he needed more than that if he was going to get through this. He shook his head sorrowfully – there was no way to get through this. This was the end for him. It was the end of all happiness for him.

Zel approached the two horses who had led the carriage into the gypsies circle. No one seemed to notice what he was doing, or at least they thought what he was doing was necessary, for he unlatched one of the mares and brushed her systematically. To anyone who knew about horses, he might have looked like he was simply grooming the horse. And no one seemed to notice when he threw himself astride and rode bareback silently out of the camp.

He couldn't face Lina right now – couldn't meet her eyes. Maybe some day . . . as he signed the papers allowing for the annulment would he be able to look at her honestly. Right now he felt like the very devil – a devil that was already condemned, already thrust out of heaven, who hadn't committed a single crime.

* * *

Author's Notes: Wasn't that savage? At least I think so. I really don't like tormenting Zel like that, but sometimes we gotta suffer a little in order to make things better. Please review! I love reviews! 


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers.

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

Zelgadis set sail for India with his troops. The journey was not a short one and it would take months for them to reach their destination. It gave him lots of time to reminisce on the events surrounding Lina. As he often stood on the deck of the ship, staring out onto the sea, he would remember her. Every moment he remembered seemed masochistic, as each thought cut like a knife, but he forced himself to think of them and analyze them. Like the first time he met her, he really didn't believe that the girl with the wild fiery locks was destined to break his heart. Or the time she had snuck into his bedroom to tell him the truth about Rezo – she looked dazzling in her white nightdress. Someone standing in the yard looking up at his window could have easily seen her shape as a ghost's, shining and beautiful in the moonlight. _Damn it! _

She _was_ a ghost . . . and she was haunting him.

His men noticed that something was wrong with him as well. It couldn't be missed. His temper was shorter and his tolerance for jokes had disappeared entirely. He had also lately developed an insistence that every member of his regiment behave like a gentlemen, pushing structure and organization onto all of them harder than ever before. He never seemed to care what they did in the mess quarters before, but now it was of utmost importance that they were extremely well-behaved. No one seemed to understand why he had turned into such a grump.

"Didn't he just get married?" one of the lieutenants asked another.

"That's what I heard," the other replied.

"One would think that he'd be happy."

"His bride didn't come with him. He's a colonel! He could have brought her along if he wanted."

"Perhaps she wouldn't come."

"To be sure, that would explain why he's so bad-tempered. Poor chap, having to leave his bride behind."

Zel overheard tidbits of several conversations like this, and quickly discarded them as they were unimportant to him. He didn't like to admit that that was one of the reasons why he was so temperamental. Lina _had_ refused to come with him.

When Zelgadis' regiment actually did arrive in India, Zelgadis was in for a shock. It wasn't that he really expected to have to go to battle, but he thought he would be busier with the coordination of patrolling Bombay, or perhaps with rebels. Instead, the only things he had to worry about were minor personnel issues and social engagements. He hated the latter more than he had ever hated anything before in his life.

Of course he had always been pressed into going into the world socially because of his rank and his mother, but it had never bothered him so much in his life as it did now that he was in India. It was just that he had never really enjoyed society . . . until he met Lina and was forced into company so much because of their engagement. He didn't enjoy it then either, but he enjoyed _her._

Then there was the one incident that pushed him over the edge.

He had been at a ball hosted by some local gentry that all of his men were very excited to attend. He was standing guard in his usual corner, partially drunk, and getting still drunker by the minute, when this woman approached him. It wasn't ordinary for women to just suddenly spark up a conversation with him, nor was it polite when they hadn't been formally introduced. She was a very tall woman with long flowing black hair, tied up in the fashion of the day, and blue eyes like gem stones. She didn't ask him his name either, so he assumed that the bad manners were just the order of the day.

"You look lonely," she said flirtatiously. "Could you use some company?" Her eyebrows were drawn up curiously, and the way she tilted her body towards him gave him a pretty good look at her sizable chest.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she was a prostitute, but resisted the urge, clinging desperately to the order and structure Lina hated. So, he had to act the gentleman to a woman who was certainly no lady.

Instead he politely asked the woman her name.

"Oh, it's Gracia," she said flippantly, "but you can call me Naga. I wanted to ask you if you liked dancing."

"I do not," he answered coldly.

Suddenly, she tilted her chin at him and looked at him more seriously. "You're . . ."

"Colonel Greywers," he answered.

Her eyes went wide in recognition, and she moved as though to hastily depart.

"Stop," he ordered, exactly in the tone of military officer and Naga stopped dead in her tracks, intimidated by his voice. "What is it you've heard about me to scare you like that?"

She hesitated.

But Zelgadis was drunk enough to feel reckless and he asked her to dance with him. Apparently, she was too afraid to refuse and put her palm into his outstretched hand. A waltz was playing.

"I'm really not afraid of you," she said quietly, but Zel knew she was lying. "I've just heard a lot about you from the men in your regiment and from . . . anyway, I was really just looking for a good time and a few laughs, as long as I'm stuck here in India with my husband."

"So, you're stuck here because your husband's a military man? What have my men told you about me?"

Naga bit down on her lower lip and refused to answer. "I told you, I just wanted a laugh, and I thought you looked like a person who could use a little pick-me-up. That's all. I really don't want to get involved with you."

"So, you're going to turn this around and act like I propositioned you? Ridiculous! Everyone knows I'm a broken-hearted man whose wife has refused to accompany him on his travels. They pity me," he said, voicing his disgust.

"They don't pity you," she said quietly.

"What?"

"Look," she said seriously, "you're very attractive in a dangerous kind of way, but I know I couldn't count on you for _just_ a laugh. My cousin Eris told me about you."

"Eris? Miss Eris Claire?" Zel asked, thinking of the little seamstress who had helped him outfit Lina. "That's who you mean isn't it?"

She nodded.

"What could she possibly have against me? My wife and I helped save her business."

"Don't act all innocent," Naga hissed. "You had an affair with her!"

"Me?" Zel asked, almost stumbling in the dance. "I didn't even know her before I was engaged to Miss Inverse. She sewed all the clothing for my wife's toilette, and I've never seen a woman happier to stitch a wedding dress. You must be mistaken."

"I'm positive she said it was a Mr. Greywers, who had an estate outside . . . Argh! I can't think of the name of the village," she said.

"I don't have an estate," Zel confessed. Then he suddenly remembered Lina's saying something about how Rezo had not been a 'very good boy'. "Do you possibly mean Mr. Rezo Greywers?"

"Oh dear! It was Rezo Greywers, and I've just made a terrible mistake, haven't I? I'm dreadfully sorry sir. How embarrassing!"

Zel let her go sit with her husband after that, and went to go have another drink.

That night, Zelgadis stood on the balcony of his room and felt the hot east wind blow over his bear skin. It was too hot for his night-shirt anyway, and life was too miserable regardless of it. He had a tall glass of water beside him. Water to salute Lina with! She had known that Rezo had been tumbling Eris, and used the information not only for her benefit, but for his as well. He was happy to drink to such a magnificently clever woman. That also meant that Rezo was probably Eris' financial backer who deserted her; probably because he was suspected of having an indiscrete relationship with her that would destroy his reputation. That also explained Rezo's taking such an interest in Lina's clothing – he recognized who made them. Zel was happy that he had unconsciously decided to support Eris' business – it was probably Rezo who told him that she was uncommonly good at her work and recommended her in the first place. He didn't like to think of any woman suffering because of Rezo's selfishness.

But then he found himself looking up at the starry sky thinking inescapably of Lina, and about how much he wanted her. He drank the rest of the water in a thirsty gulp. She didn't want him. He came to India to forget her – to lose himself in his work and find a way to live with his lot. However, even though he immersed himself in his work, he found that there simply wasn't enough of it to keep himself occupied, and he judged that if things continued as they were – he would go crazy.

He had been in Bombay for weeks and on the boat for months before that, but he had made no visible progress. His heart and mind were still full of Lina, and nothing else.

It was then that he made up his mind. The next day he would go see General Metallium and ask to be transferred to their conquests in Africa. There was no point staying where there was no work for him to do. He remembered what Lina and Madam Martina had thought about him if he got involved in a war, but he didn't care what monster they thought he would become. He didn't believe in fortune telling, since it deceived him into believing the woman he loved, loved him back. At least, if he was involved in the fighting, there was the possibility that he would never come back . . .

* * *

Author's Notes: Did anyone see that coming? Thanks for reviews, and see ya next time. 


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers - I'm just quite tired right now.

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**Chapter Fifteen**

Zelgadis marched up to General Metallium's office the next morning with a request for a change in command. He wasn't sure whether or not the man would agree to his transfer, but he hoped so. Zel was just stewing in his own juices in Bombay. He had to get out and go to a place that actually needed him – and forget all about Lina properly.

Xellos greeted him warmly, or at least as warmly as was possible for the demon of a man. "So, what can I do for you? Hell, man, you look hung over," he complimented. "Won't you have a seat?"

Zel remained standing and said briskly, "I was wondering if it would be possible for me to take a command in the African conquests."

"Really? You want to go out there? And to think, on the night of your wedding, you wanted to give up the military entirely. See, you're thankful now that I didn't accept your resignation, now aren't you?" Xellos said breezily as he lit his cigarette.

"Yes," Zel acknowledged, rolling his eyes. "Anyway . . ."

"Oh yes, I was going to tell you. I got a letter from your wife the other day."

Zel's face lit up. "You did?"

"Indeed, I did. She said she was coming out to join you and was wondering if I'd secure passage for her as well as accommodations when she arrived."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Zel demanded.

Xellos managed to look blameless as he said, "Obviously, I thought you were in on it. Otherwise, why wouldn't you have arranged her travel plans for her? Obviously you were too busy and needed me to offer a helping hand, which I was more than happy to do."

"Have you responded to her letter?"

"Not exactly . . ." Xellos said slowly.

"Well, you must write her back at once and tell her you can't possibly make such arrangements for her," Zel said, practically reaching across Xellos' desk to grab a quill to write the letter himself.

"Don't be so hasty Colonel," Xellos said, putting a hand on Zelgadis' shoulder. "I think your transfer is a far more important issue at this point. Have a seat and we'll discuss it."

This time Zelgadis actually did sit down. He had to; Xellos _was_ his superior officer. What was he going to say?

Xellos sat down behind his desk and took a long drag on his cigarette. "There is definitely the possibility of a transfer, but it will depend on a few things."

"Like what?" Zelgadis asked seriously, hoping he could trust Xellos to deal fairly with him.

Xellos seemed to be regarding the ceiling most intently. "As far as I'm concerned, you can have it if you want it, but you'll also have to impress General Grasucherra and convince him to give you a recommendation. He and his wife are giving a ball tonight at their home. You were invited, no?"

Zelgadis remembered the number of unopened invitations sitting on his bureau and imagined that one of them was probably from General Grasucherra. "I've probably been invited," Zel said drearily.

"Good. Why don't you attend, put on a good show, and try your best to get that recommendation? But, I'll warn you. You probably won't get it just by one evening alone. You'll probably have to become his fencing partner, and escort his wife to her society functions a time or two when he's not able to attend. You know, that sort of thing."

Zel's jaw just about hit him in the knee as he realized what Xellos was suggesting. Zel hated catering to society, and he would have to do _that_ to get the recommendation? He silently cursed.

"But, if you get it, I'll be very sorry to see you leave Bombay. Even though you don't know it, you're a good man for paperwork and for keeping the men in line. It'll be bad to lose you if you go off to the wilds, but that's really up to you," Xellos said.

"Such praise," Zel said cynically, astounded that Xellos had admitted that he was skilled at anything. It was unlike the general. Did he want something?

"Yes. Disgusting isn't it?" Xellos said, picking up some papers and grinding out his cigarette in the ash tray on his desk. "Now, I have important matters to attend to, so get out. I'll see you at the ball tonight, no doubt, and I'm sure you'll be able to spare a few moments then to discuss what should go in my correspondence to your wife. Charming woman . . ."

Zelgadis wanted to throttle Xellos at this last remark. Not because Lina wasn't a charming woman – she was – but he was burning with rage that Lina had written to Xellos and not to him. He suddenly remembered their dance together the night of the wedding. The sight of Lina pressed into Xellos' arms was wretched, almost painful. Damn him! Zel bowed properly, despite his fury and went into the hallway. He was quickly heading towards his own office - seething.

Zelgadis didn't usually think of himself as the jealous type, but he had never had anything he cared for enough to be jealous when someone intruded on it. He was ashamed by his feelings as he thought himself far more controlled than to be ruled by such petty emotions. Besides, Lina probably just wanted to come so that she could present him with the annulment agreement.

Then suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks. What if she had confided in Xellos, and told him the reason for her visit? Xellos wasn't married, and Zel had never seen him attached to any woman, but Zel had never before heard the evil general compliment a woman in such a way as he had just complimented Lina. Granted, he had only said a few words to praise her . . . but . . . he never praised anyone! Was it possible that Xellos was planning on making a play for her as soon as the papers were signed? Zelgadis felt sick as he thought of the flattery Xellos had said about him, Zelgadis. Were the things connected?

Why couldn't he get the hell out of here? Well, he'd show them! He'd get his recommendation from General Grasucherra, and he'd do it without playing up to the old fop. Then to hell with Xellos, Rezo, his mother, and most of all – Lina – who didn't care what she'd done to him!

* * *

That night, Zelgadis, approached the home of General Grasucherra on horseback. The sun had already set and there were torches burning on the lawn to mark the path for the coachmen who had to drive up to the house. There was a large banner placed above the door frame. It read: The Dance of the Twelfth Moon. Doubtless, everyone inside was having a wonderful time when a ball was entitled something as hopelessly romantic as that, and he would have to put on a reasonably good show himself. 

He wasn't near drunk enough to deal with this, he thought sarcastically. Not with his problems.

Zelgadis entered and shook hands with General Dynast Grasucherra and his wife Sherra. He hadn't come early, and he was one of the last people greeted by host and hostess at the door before they went to attend to their guests.

"Were you kept away by work?" Sherra asked innocently.

"A man must do his best with every obligation he's entrusted," Zelgadis said with an amiable smile and a kiss on her gloved hand.

"I see," she said sweetly, bouncing her dark curls. "That's why General Metallium escorted _her_!"

"_Her_?"

"Your wife, silly," she said.

Zel involuntarily turned his head to view the crowd and there she was. Red curls tied up, her cheek stained scarlet from the heat, dancing closely with Xellos in the press. She had come! For her to be here now, Xellos must have received that communication with her MONTHS ago and had not told him. He probably arranged for her travel before he left England himself. The whole thing certainly smacked of Xellos; it was exactly like him – the monster.

First, Zel was furious at the sight of seeing her in his arms, and felt that all his suspicions were valid. Or maybe it was the dress she was wearing. Even from where Zelgadis stood, he could see that it was far too daring for the London scene. It was a deep fiery red with deep orange undertones, with hardly any sleeves at all. She and Xellos were laughing together at something – hopefully not at him, or blood would be spilled that night.

It had been a very long time since Zelgadis had last seen Lina, and he couldn't believe her loveliness, but that didn't mean he was going to play the fool. He was too enraged for that. Maybe . . . just maybe, he would be able to face her without crumpling in agony, and finally let her know that it wasn't okay to play him.

He thanked Sherra for pointing Lina out and stepped away so the next people could be welcomed, and invited the challenge of dealing with this awkward situation with confidence.

Then he went down to the dance floor and spotting Naga, asked her if she would like to dance with him. She agreed immediately, and seemed happy that he didn't hold it against her that she thought he was Eris' lover. He span her in the dance, and didn't turn his eyes once to see if Lina had seen him or not, regardless of how much he was tempted to do so. Besides, Naga was the type of woman who was distracting, even with all her bad manners, or perhaps because of them. Zel did this solely because he was certain that Lina had never seen him dance with another woman.

After it was over he returned Naga to her husband and complimented him on his cleverness for having caught such a pretty woman. His name was Halas, but as he tried to thank Zel for his compliment, he was interrupted.

"Certainly, he's trying to make me jealous," a sprightly red head announced, butting in quite rudely, taking her place beside Zel and offering him her hand.

Naga laughed very hard at this.

Zelgadis introduced them at once and then said that he promised the next dance to Lina. He gripped her in his arms as severely as he dared in company and practically hauled her off to the dance floor.

"What are you doing here?" he whispered in her ear violently, as they were pushed together by the whirling dancers.

"I came here to stop you from making a mistake," she rasped into his ear.

"What mistake was that?"

"Leaving me behind in England!"

"That makes no sense," Zel scorned, giving her an unexplainable look of displeasure. "You said quite clearly that you had no interest in accompanying me here to India. Look, I heard what the gypsy woman said to you about me, and I know the truth. You think I'm a monster. So, why did you come here? If it's for the annulment, I'm a gentleman, and I'll be true to my word. Just give me the papers and I'll sign them immediately if that's what you want." He took her hand in his and started leading her into the dance.

"Zel, you've got it all wrong."

"Really? Prove it to me."

"Can't we get out of here?" she asked, looking around at all the people. "Isn't there a place we can go where we can talk privately?"

"No," Zel said sternly. "They haven't even served dinner yet. It would be extraordinarily unimpressive for me to leave before that."

"You're their dog, aren't you?" she asked, looking up at him angrily.

Zel rolled his eyes. "Say whatever pleases you. I have to pay my dues somewhere. Besides, I think I have a much bigger problem on my hands. Where are you staying tonight?"

"With you," she said, looking at the floor.

"With me?" Zel gasped.

"There's no where else, unless you and I want to arrange something. I couldn't tell the general what the real situation was between the two of us, so I had to let him arrange for me to stay with you. You have a room to accommodate two people, don't you?"

"Of course," Zel said, trying to decide if it was worth it to make the arrangements she suggested. Hang it all! He would have to let her share his room with him, but he really didn't want to be anywhere near her when he was this angry. _He_ would have to go somewhere else.

"Then there's no problem," she said saucily.

"What, exactly, Mrs. Greywers, are you trying to do?" Zel asked, deciding that he didn't care who was around to hear. "You don't love me. Why are you acting like you want to be close to me?"

"I told you not to talk to Madam Martina about that night and you did it anyway," she accused.

"And why wasn't I supposed to talk to her?"

"Because, I knew _this_ would happen. You would lose your head and leave immediately, but who ever would have imagined that the damage would be so bad that you'd leave me on our bed of perfume and flower petals to celebrate our wedding on my own? You trusted me _that_ little!" she said harshly into his ear.

He gripped her in his arms tighter and resisted the urge to choke her while getting his turn to violently whisper his response. "So, why didn't you talk to me about my fortune yourself if you knew I would behave like this?"

"You don't understand me or my reasons. If we could be alone for just a few minutes, I know I could help you understand," she pleaded angrily.

"I said I can't leave and I mean it. We'll have to keep talking as discreetly as possible until we sort things out here, or we'll have to get along until the end of the night."

"This is the worst," she fumed, her lower lip pouting in displeasure.

"Don't stumble over your bottom lip," he said coldly, observing her at what he thought was the height of her beauty. She looked incredible when provoked. "Just behave yourself, and we'll get through this. I know you can do it, because I've watched you do it fifty times, and you always manage it with poise. I expect no less from you tonight."

"Listen, Zelgadis, I didn't want to have this conversation here, but I can't wait another damn second to tell you everything. I have traveled for months believing that you hate me, because of what that fool of a woman said, and I can't take it another second." She took a deep breath, "and I don't care who hears me. I've got to tell you everything or I'll go crazy." Then she started her tale. "You remember the first night we met – I kissed you, and I told you it was because I liked how you looked at me. Well, that's true, but it was also because I was very much drawn to you, and if you had been admiring one of the other girls I would have done anything to make you pay attention to me. And when we met the second day, I wouldn't have told you my name if I didn't want you to come looking for me. I was thinking of falling in love with you, but then the very next time I saw you, you came with your interesting little proposal. I admit that I was surprised, and didn't know what to say at first. I mean I didn't know anything about you, but I thought that if I said 'no' you would marry Luna and disappear from my life and I'd never have a chance at you. I couldn't let that happen, so I used Madam Martina as a scapegoat for my own desire to get to know you better. And I couldn't just agree without any reason on my part as to why I would want to participate in a phony marriage, so I decided to let you think it was because I set such store by gypsy story-telling. I like the gypsies very much, but I think that's all rubbish. As if she knows the future! What I mean to say is that, it wouldn't have mattered what she said to you or to me, I would have agreed to your proposal."

Zel gave her a startled expression. "Keep going," he said, fascinated by her speech.

"That's honestly how attracted I was to you, but I still wanted the time we were engaged to get to know you better and to decide how I really felt. Well, it didn't take long for me to realize that you were exactly the kind of man I always wanted. I didn't believe that men like you existed. You were kind to your mother even though she was unreasonable and you were irritated with her most of the time. And you helped that poor girl, Eris, who was getting eaten alive by the community, and you did a thousand other things that I didn't think anyone had the courage or forbearance to do. I could barely stand to be apart from you for even a few moments in the day. And we had such fun together. It was like you were the perfect link between reality and the dream world that I wanted to have with the gypsies. Then there was that one night that we were dancing together by the fire and you kissed me. Do you remember the night?"

Zel nodded.

"I had been trying to win you, but when you kissed me that night, it didn't feel like love. It was nice, but it felt evocative and I was convinced that it was inspired by feelings of . . . desire. I mean, passing attraction is nice, but I wanted deep enduring love from you, and I wasn't sure if you felt that way for me. So, I asked you to do all kinds of impossible things to prove to me that you loved me – truly. I was very demanding, but it was very important to me that you were not like Rezo and I decided that if you would leave the military for me than that was enough to prove that you were not like him."

"You what? I told General Metalium that night that I was going to resign, and you didn't even want me to?"

"If you had not done that, I would not have been convinced, because of what you said: that you would never leave the woman you loved to be killed on the battlefield, so if you loved me you wouldn't go."

Zelgadis looked at her, and was too astounded to speak.

"I am in love with you, and have been since the beginning. I wouldn't have broken my neck to impress your mother or anyone if I didn't feel this strongly about you," she stopped speaking and looked at him, waiting to see his reaction to everything she had said. "I had absolutely nothing to gain from the arrangement than your love. Is it possible that you could still care for me, even after everything I've done?"

Zelgadis didn't care about looking reserved to the crowd of onlookers anymore as his anger melted away. He looked in her eyes and he knew that to the searing depth of her, she was telling him the truth. This was not a joke to her. She didn't follow Xellos all the way to India, but had followed _him_! He was her lover . . .

Zel grasped her and pulled her to his heart. This feeling was unlike anything. Maybe . . . he wouldn't go to Africa, or anywhere else. Maybe he would stay here in this moment until everything around them fell to ashes. Even then, he would still feel as happy and weak as did at this very moment.

* * *

Author's Notes: Hiya! Yeah - I'm wrapping it up. Expect one more chapter - then we're done. Special thanks to anyone who reviews. Sorry - I really am quite tired.  



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